


Wolf At Her Door

by KittyGetsLoose



Category: Inuyasha - Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-03
Updated: 2010-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:28:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 46,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyGetsLoose/pseuds/KittyGetsLoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rin hopes to marry Kohaku, but to him she is only a child. Then an encounter with the leader of the wolf pack that once killed her alters their lives. KogaXRin/KohakuXRin</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Child

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I don't own Inuyasha, and make no money or profit from writing this fanfic; Rumiko Takahashi has all the rights to the original manga and anime and the characters in them.

Rin held her breath as Kohaku unknotted the pink furoshiki, saying: "This one is for you, Rin."

He had returned to the village only this morning after a series of demon-slaying jobs that had taken him away for weeks, but which had obviously paid him very well, for he came back bearing thoughtful gifts for everyone.

Inuyasha and Kagome were presented with a beautifully made cooking pot, which pleased the new couple as they had just moved into their own hut, and Kagome had lamented that the only pot they had was cracked, making it hard for her to cook the meals Inuyasha loved to eat.

The old village priestess, Kaede, was given lengths of plain cloth that came just in time for her to sew herself some new garments, for every item in her existing miko's wardrobe of plain white and vermilion red had a tear or patch in it somewhere, thanks to her long hours spent working in the herb and vegetable gardens, and walking through the forest with the village children to teach them how to identify useful plants and avoid poisonous ones.

Kohaku's toddler nephew and five-year-old twin nieces were given wooden and cloth toys, while their parents, Miroku and Sango, received lengths of cloth with attractive prints, which would be handy for making new summer yukata for themselves and their growing family. Kohaku also had a personal gift for his sister, a bracelet of polished coral beads, to match her name.

Shippo too got a bunch of toys, but special ones, as Kohaku explained: "The third village that hired me had a friendly fox demon living nearby, and he had been just as tormented by the mantis demon's attacks as the villagers were. He flew after Kirara and me as we were leaving, to ask how he could reward me. I turned down his offers of payment, but when I mentioned that I was friends with a young fox demon, he insisted that I give you a bunch of his trick toys. He said you would know how to use them!"

Shippo, thrilled to bits, could not resist pulling them all out of the blue cloth wrap at once and playing with them, showing them first to Rin, then to Kirara who had hunkered down at one end of the hut to enjoy her own reward of a generous pack of fish for her supper.

Rin's gift was the last one that Kohaku reached for, and she held her breath, only to exhale it in the slow silence of disappointment, when he pulled out a doll.

"I saw this at the fifth place I was hired by, a fairly big town with very skilled craftsmen in it, and I thought of you at once, Rin. It looks rather like you, don't you think?" he asked her.

Rin put on a brilliant smile and pretended to admire the doll, saying: "Thank you so much, Kohaku. It's wearing such a beautiful robe!"

The doll was skilfully made, and dressed in gorgeous silk cloth dyed gold and rose, a lovely thing that any little girl would be pleased to own. But Rin's heart sank at the sight of it because it told her that Kohaku still saw her as a child.

No one was certain what her actual years were, as she had been orphaned young, but she had begun her monthly bleeding two years ago, and at that time, Kaede, Kagome and Sango had affirmed that she was probably twelve. That meant she was fourteen now, most definitely a woman, and certainly of marriageable age.

Kagome had once told her that in the future she came from, even women of twenty were often considered too young to marry, with many choosing to wait till they were twenty-five or thirty or older, and a growing number were opting not to marry or have children at all. But while all that was very interesting and perhaps even vaguely inspiring, Rin was painfully aware that she was not from Kagome's era, and that in her world, fourteen was an age at which a good many girls were already married, or had at least been promised to a boy – or an older man. Daughters of powerful families were often settled in life even earlier, at eleven or twelve, if they had not in fact been betrothed at birth to their cousins, or to the distantly related infant sons of other noble families, for the purpose of forming or reinforcing strategic alliances.

Yet Kohaku, by now almost eighteen and more than old enough to take a wife, persisted in regarding her as a child.

Even her adoptive demon father, Sesshomaru, who from the perspective of his enormously long lifespan ought to have more reason than most for considering her an immature thing, had for the past few years acknowledged through the nature of his gifts to her that she was becoming a woman.

Silk kimono, jewellery of gold and jade, exquisite fans of cypress wood and painted fabric, and combs of soapstone and ivory had been among his more recent presents to her, with admonishments to keep them well and not squander or sell them, because he intended them to form part of her dowry for when she chose to marry.

"When you are ready to take a husband, he must know that you are no common village girl he can mistreat, but that your guardian is a taiyoukai who can make him wish he had never been born if he so much as lays a harsh hand on you," Sesshomaru had told her a year ago, in a rare speech of heartfelt candour, on a day when his emotions had run closer to the surface than was usual for him, after a particularly painful argument with his half-brother Inuyasha.

As Rin gazed upon Kohaku's handsome face over the fire on which their close-knit group cooked their supper in Kaede's hut this evening, she remembered her guardian's words and thought to herself that she was quite ready to take a husband now, but unfortunately, the young man she wished to marry would no more have considered her for a wife than he would have considered marrying the doll he had just given her.

She knew it because she had recently overheard his sister dropping a big hint to him that perhaps it was time to settle down, and the former taijiya had quite pointedly nudged him in Rin's direction by mentioning that it would be good to choose someone with whom he had shared experiences and spent significant time, and whose character he knew well. When he had refused to take that hint, Sango had added: "You travelled with Sesshomaru and Rin all the way to the underworld and back, so there's at least one girl you know very well – and she's growing up to be a very pretty, capable and good-natured young woman. Shall I ask Miroku to approach Sesshomaru or Inuyasha on your behalf about this matter?"

Rin could still remember every word of Kohaku's answer to his sister: "Thank you for your concern, Onee, but I'm really quite happy as I am. Besides, Rin is only a little girl."

Sango had sighed gently as she said: "I married Miroku when I was sixteen, but we would have tied the knot several months earlier if we hadn't been battling Naraku throughout the time we knew each other, or if Miroku had been able to get rid of the curse in his hand before then. Rin has already turned fourteen, and if you don't ask for her soon, someone else will. For all we know, Sesshomaru may have youkai suitors lined up for her, but I believe he would consider you most suitable. If you ask him before anyone else does, he is likely to give his consent."

"Onee, let's talk about such matters when I'm ready to settle down," Kohaku had replied lightly. "For one thing, you can't be certain that Sesshomaru-sama would consider me most suitable – remember that we met only because I had been ordered to kill Rin! And anyway, foisting me onto some poor child when I'm not ready to start a family of my own wouldn't be fair to her, whoever she is who eventually gets saddled with me!"

Rin now recalled that conversation she had unintentionally been in a position to eavesdrop on, and it rather killed her appetite tonight, for instead of eating, she spent most of the evening stealing glances at him and wondering what was going on in his head. He met her eyes twice over supper, and gave her a smile each time, but that was all, and it was the same friendly smile he gave to anyone else who spoke to him, or with whom he exchanged glances.

That night, after all the food had been eaten up and the bowls and pots washed, the others left Kaede's hut for their own dwellings, with Inuyasha and Kagome strolling next door to their newly built home, and Kohaku, Miroku, Sango and the three little ones going further off to their hut close to the main village lane.

Alone now with Kaede and Shippo, with whom she had lived for the past five years or so, Rin helped with the tidying-up and a bit of cleaning before the three of them pulled out their bed mats and the robes they used as blankets, and prepared to turn in for the night.

As the old priestess and the child fox-demon lay down to rest, Rin went over to the heavy camphor-wood chest Sesshomaru had given her to keep her belongings in, and put her new doll into it, laying her down on a bed of silk beside two other dolls and a toy dog made of cloth that Kohaku had previously presented to her.

By the faint light of the fading pit fire, she looked at the four toys and sighed, then locked the chest and returned to her sleeping mat, where she slipped under her robe-blanket and closed her eyes.

She fell asleep quickly, for she was tired, and that night she dreamed of Kohaku walking away from her across a landscape of mist and sand, and of being unable to catch up with him no matter how fast she ran, while Shippo in turn was running behind her, crying out to her to wait for him. But she was so engrossed in her own urgent desire to reach Kohaku that she raced on, leaving the little fox to slip further and further away from them, his cries growing fainter in the distance. Far away to her left, beyond the thick mists, the wolves that had once taken her life lifted their muzzles to the moon and howled. The sound terrified her and she ran faster, but Kohaku was out of sight, and Shippo was gone.

She woke before the dream came to its natural end, just before dawn, to find her face wet with tears. Glancing over at Shippo's sleeping form, she understood that the dream had told her something she had refused to consciously acknowledge before: Shippo had had a child's crush on her through all the years they had lived together in this village, bearing a child's hope that he could grow up to be her mate, not yet completely grasping with his young demon mind that even when she died an old woman several decades from now, he would still be a youngster who would by that time have reached an age when he would be the demon equivalent of little more than a ten-year-old human. He knew it with his head, but would not accept it with his heart.

While her own hope of catching up with Kohaku, age-wise, was a far more realistic ambition than Shippo's hope of reaching her in the future, she wondered if the emotional distance between them was as vast as the lifespan chasm between herself and Shippo, and in the weak light of dawn, with the dream-howls of the wolves still ringing in her ears, it seemed to her that there was little hope of either distance ever being bridged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is set in the same universe as my earlier fic, "And You, My Brother", but it is not really a sequel, so it can be read and understood without having gone through the previous story. One or two references, however, may seem obscure to those who didn't go through the earlier story, but these references will be minor ones about characters who will mostly be staying on the sidelines here, so they should not interfere with the understanding of the main storyline about Rin, Kohaku and Koga.
> 
> And a quick note about spelling: I spell the names of characters like Sesshomaru, Koga and Kikyo without the "ou" convention of indicating a difference in the vowel quality, as I am accustomed to seeing them that way in the manga. But I am inconsistent with that rule when it comes to words like "youkai" and "hanyou", because for some odd reason, they look weird to me if spelt as "yokai" and "hanyo"! Sorry if that bothers anyone!


	2. Image

"Inuyasha?" Rin called up to her adoptive half-demon uncle sitting high in a tree, whose lowest branches she could never have reached even if she had stood on someone else's shoulders.

It was a hot summer morning, three months after Kohaku had given her the doll, and she had been throwing herself into other pursuits to keep her mind busy, including what she now needed help with.

"What is it, kid?" Inuyasha growled without even looking at her. He was ostensibly napping, but everyone knew that he was actually keeping a protective eye – or nose, rather – on his wife from his vantage point while she was outside the village boundaries, without annoying her by following her everywhere.

"Can I ask you about these words I can't read?" Rin held up a scroll, forcing him to turn his eyes in her direction and see that what she held could only have been handed to her by Jaken or Sesshomaru, for it was finely worked, on expensive paper.

"You know I hate reading," he grumbled, but at least he was granting her a look from his lofty perch.

"I know, but I can't ask Miroku, Kagome or Kaede-sama right now. They're deep in the forest teaching the younger children about poisonous plants. Although you say you hate reading, you're really good at it, Inuyasha – almost as good as Sesshomaru-sama!"

"Oh all right, stop chattering already," he muttered, and jumped lightly to the ground.

"I don't talk as much as I used to," Rin said, feeling a bit hurt.

"But you still talk. Now what words can't you read?"

"These." She pointed to several places in line after line of a poem written in the complex characters that had originated from the realm across the sea. That writing system was traditionally taught to well-born males in this land, but Sesshomaru had made sure his adopted daughter was trained to read and write such characters as well as any prince. He had also ensured that she learnt the simpler writing systems more often used by educated women on these shores.

"That's a lot of words you can't read," Inuyasha scowled. But she was accustomed to his mannerisms, and knew he wasn't really annoyed by her request for help.

He read them out to her, and she did her best to memorise them, marvelling anew at how her uncle's uncouth exterior obscured so completely the fact that he had been perfectly well educated by his noble-born mother while she had lived. Although he claimed to have disliked his lessons and to hate reading, he had in fact retained what she had imparted to him of literacy, calligraphy and poetry. He hid it all under his wildness and rude speech, revealing his more cultured side only when required to share knowledge with a young one like herself.

"Got all that?" he asked, as she repeated and mouthed the words to herself under her breath.

"I think so."

"What does my brother want you so well-educated for, anyway? Is he planning to mate you to one of his taiyoukai pals?"

He was teasing, but Rin blanched. "Sesshomaru-sama will do no such thing!" she cried. "You know he will let me choose whom I want to marry. He won't force me into anything arranged. He told you that himself! Besides, he has no 'pals' – something you know perfectly well too!"

Surprised by how seriously she seemed to take his words, Inuyasha was about to protest that he was only joking when a thought occurred to him, and he asked in an exaggeratedly sly manner: "What are you so upset about, Rin? Got someone in mind already, have you?"

She glared at him as hard as a good-natured girl can glare at someone she respects, before turning on her heel and stomping off, leaving Inuyasha to leap back into his tree to resume his pseudo-nap, and ponder the peculiar nature of the females of all species.

Back at the hut, Rin spent a bit more time reading and writing before putting the books and scrolls away and sprinting out to the vegetable garden. That really was where she should have been working all morning instead of reading Tang-dynasty poems filled with moonlight and untold love which put her in a thoughtful mood and made her sigh that she had no husband to share them with – not that Kohaku was keen on poetry, but still, it would be nice to express her thoughts about what she read to one she was intimate with.

Someone had just watered the ground in and around the vegetable patch, so she got on with her own job of putting seedlings into the empty rows from which ripe plants had been pulled up a few days ago. She wondered if her life would go on this way forever, and if she would soon be the only girl in this village who would still be unmarried by some horribly advanced age (like eighteen), not for religious reasons but because the boy she had set her heart on wouldn't have her. How embarrassing that would be.

Rin should have been the last girl of her era to care what social norms dictated she ought to be doing by the time she was fourteen, or twenty, or whatever age the gods were pleased to let her reach after permitting her twice to come back from the dead. She should have been untouched by such concerns, for she had been raised most unconventionally after being orphaned, and remained surrounded by beings who defied both human and demon social expectations in numerous ways.

Her adoptive father was a great youkai who was a law unto himself; her former babysitters were a water sprite and a two-headed dragon; her current guardian was an old one-eyed miko who accepted all manner of beings if they did no harm to others; Inuyasha was a hanyou whose very existence was a rare thing; and his wife was a powerful young priestess from the future who had retained her spiritual abilities despite choosing to marry him when she returned to this world two years ago, in an age when most miko never married or lost their powers if they did.

Then there was the fact that her childhood friend was a fox demon who would never grow up in time to marry her; the young man she wished to be a wife to was a taijiya who had tried to kill her when they first met; while his sister and brother-in-law had looked death in the face countless times as they fought to save each other's lives – and Sango had once been ready to sacrifice Rin to save Miroku. Rin had never borne a grudge against her for that, but she wondered if Sango's prompting of her brother to marry her was another of her countless ways of atoning for that past incident.

With all these examples and more before her, no one would have been much surprised if Rin had chosen to shave her head, or suddenly sprouted wings, or married a frog and gone to live in a pond, and she herself wouldn't have been too astonished if any of that had happened a few years ago when she was still a child in a world that looked like a magical wonderland.

But she was a woman now, and as she had come of age, her childish crush on Kohaku had deepened into something more intense, a burning sensation that made her feel she no longer wanted a peculiar existence, but one in which Kohaku would choose her to share his life.

Yet her strange background linked her to him in a way no other girl was. She had known him first as her jailor, then her would-be murderer. They had both died and returned from the dead. They had both been taken on by Sesshomaru-sama. Neither could ever again be revived by Tenseiga. Surely they were joined by fate? Couldn't she erase the first impression she had made on Kohaku's mind as a chatty little girl prone to losing her life, and replace that with the new image of a woman who could stand by his side for the rest of their mortal days?

As she worked in the summer heat and humidity, she wondered what kind of wife Kohaku would want, and if she could make herself into the type of woman he would wish to court.

She raised a hand to her head to brush an insect away, and the touch of her hair against her fingers reminded her that at her age, she really ought to pay more attention to her appearance. An unkempt crop looked fine on Kagome's head – the miko was from another time, after all, and already had a husband.

But Rin knew that the way she herself left her hair sticking up and falling about everywhere was a world apart from how other village girls had their tresses neatly bound up in scarves or tied back from their faces, and yet another world away from the noble ladies who wore their hair silky and long, draped elegantly over their shoulders or loosely tied to rest against their backs, with shorter trimmed lengths framing their faces attractively.

She was neither here nor there, not a common village girl or a noblewoman, and looking neither one way nor another, but simply a mess.

Kohaku couldn't possibly find anything attractive about her crazily lopsided sprigs of hair, hastily tied up with narrow strips of cloth to keep stray strands out of her eyes. Or those uneven lengths that tumbled about her neck. No wonder he thought of her as a child, as she still groomed herself like one.

And her feet – oh dear, she thought, peering down at her none-too-clean toes. She preferred running around barefooted, but while going perpetually unshod was fine for a hanyou like Inuyasha, she was a human girl, and Kohaku must think her such a wild little monkey! It was all very well when she had been wandering the land with Sesshomaru-sama, untamed, but things were different now. She began to wonder if she should be grateful that Kohaku gave her dolls instead of monkey food.

She sighed and fell back from her half-kneeling position to sit on the grass verge bordering the vegetable garden, resting her elbows on her knees and propping up her head on her hands, only to realise that by doing so, she was smearing damp soil onto her face and creating grass stains on her yukata, right over her backside, thanks to the freshly watered ground. If Kohaku saw her in this state, he would have even more reason to think her an unmarriageable little thing.

She sprang up and raced towards Kaede's hut to make herself more presentable, only for the worst thing to happen – she ran full-tilt into the young man himself as they both rounded the corner of a neighbouring hut, coming from opposite directions. She instinctively grabbed the front of his robe to keep from being knocked over, and saw with dismay that her fingers were staining his garments with the brown hues of the earth she had been planting seedlings into.

"Oh no, your clothes!" she cried, blushing as she felt his strong hands grasping her by the elbows to keep her upright. "I'm so sorry!" She wanted to brush the soil away, but stopped when she realised she would only smear more dirt over the fabric.

Kohaku laughed, released her arms once she had a firm footing again after their collision, and said: "This is nothing, Rin – haven't you seen me coming back to the village time and again completely covered in youkai blood – and some of my own? Goodness knows how often I've tumbled off Kirara's back straight into the mud too. Please don't worry about such a tiny bit of earth."

She smiled faintly, conscious of his physical proximity and suddenly remembering that she was supposed to be repairing her appearance. She became painfully aware that she was no pretty picture at this moment, with her messy, sweaty hair plastered to her neck and forehead, and her face and hands decorated with soil.

Confirming her fears, he commented: "You look like you've been working really hard in the garden. This is a hot summer, isn't it?"

She coloured again and nodded, then started to sidle away, afraid to walk past him or turn her back to him, because she didn't want him to see the grass stains over her butt.

"Are you all right, Rin?" he asked, genuinely concerned by her sudden silence, her flushed face and the odd way she was edging away from him when it hadn't been too long ago that they had been close companions, riding Lord Sesshomaru's two-headed dragon together as they journeyed through the strangest places. Once, he had even borne her himself, without breath or a soul in her body, through the netherworld.

"I – I'm fine," she stammered, sidling away from him until she pressed her back firmly against the side of the hut whose corner they had collided at. "I forgot to get something from Kaede-sama. I… er… I must go. Sorry again for messing up for your clothes."

She edged round the corner and sprinted away before Kohaku could look around the side of the hut, and dashed into Kaede's abode, panting and sweatier than before. She was grateful to have the place to herself, for she was flustered and dishevelled, upset with herself for behaving so nervously. Now Kohaku would think she was messy _and_ insane! She wanted time alone to calm down and clean up.

Shippo was out somewhere, learning the ways of the fox-demon world with the kitsune friends he had spent more time with since Rin had hurt his feelings by refusing to play with him as much as before. She had not known how else to begin the process of weaning him off the idea of her as his future mate – a serious talk with him while he was still so young seemed much too sombre and final, so she hoped he would get childishly annoyed enough with her to look to other friends, and gradually cease to be so attached to her.

Kaede-sama hadn't returned from the forest either. By this hour, the young children should be done with the poisonous plants, and were probably learning to read a little, or to protect themselves against bandits, rogue samurai and human-eating youkai, or how to treat wounds – what Kagome cheerily labelled "Essential Survival Basics for the Sengoku Jidai", baffling everyone within earshot because they did not even know that the age they were living in had such a name.

Rin herself had learnt all that and more from the old priestess and Miroku, and acquired useful new knowledge from the young miko about things called germs, and how to prevent infections, which could easily kill humans in this era unlike in Kagome's future. All that in addition to the tutoring over the years from Sesshomaru, Jaken and Inuyasha to make her not only literate, but cultured and well-read.

As she cleaned her hands on a rag she had dampened with water, she wondered if Kohaku would like a well-educated wife, or a girl with a simpler upbringing whose whole existence would be devoted to being an excellent mother to his children and to keeping his home in order while he went out to earn a living slaying trouble-making demons.

Perhaps he wanted someone who could do battle beside him, and fight like his sister Sango or purify demons with arrows like Kagome. Well, she could try to do that. Sesshomaru-sama had seen to it that she continually learnt from himself and Inuyasha how to handle common objects like branches, sticks, utensils, stones and farm tools as makeshift weapons, in case she was ever cornered by youkai or human rogues – the idea was that she should be able to buy time for herself until her friends arrived.

In recent years, they had also begun teaching her to wield proper weapons like daggers, staffs and light swords. This secret training had begun three or four years back, when Kagome had not returned yet, and Sesshomaru used to take Inuyasha away from the village for weeks on end. While the place was protected during those times by Miroku, Sango and Kaede, as well as Kohaku between jobs, Rin could tell that her lord Sesshomaru preferred to have himself or his half-brother close to the area which was home to so many of the mortal individuals who were important to them, for these were dangerous times.

With Kagome's return, and her marriage to Inuyasha mostly keeping the half-demon in the village, Sesshomaru did not come by as frequently. He came regularly enough, though, and always had something to teach her when they met. Would Kohaku be pleased that she knew such a wide variety of things, from writing to swordplay? Or would he think it made her unsuitable as a wife?

She wondered about that as she removed her outer robe and sponged off the grass stains. Then she glanced into the mirror Kagome had given her and tidied her unruly hair. What did Kohaku see when he looked at her, she wondered? Did he think her pretty? Plain? Ugly? Rin had no idea. She had lived a good part of her life without any looking glasses other than the calm surfaces of ponds, but ironically, now that she had good mirrors and knew very well what she looked like, she had become too accustomed to her own face to judge how someone else would perceive her. Once, she had taken a first good look at herself in a startlingly clear glass an itinerant trader had brought to the village from across the sea, and that novel, accurate reflection of her face had left her thinking that she looked acceptable enough. But that was then. She had grown a lot since.

Staring now into an even clearer mirror from a future era, Rin had the strange sensation of seeing herself perfectly while no longer comprehending what she truly looked like, for her heart was whispering that the only truth of her appearance was to be found in how she looked in a certain young man's eyes.

.............

That night, she lay awake for hours. She had not slept well since summer began, but it had nothing to do with the heat.

She told no one, but from the time her body had declared itself ready for childbearing, she had begun to relive the occasions on which she had died. At first the recollections were only vaguely troubling. Then the visions became increasingly vivid, although she did not dwell on them or invite them into her head. By the start of this summer, the episodes were on the point of becoming physically painful.

She did not understand why this was happening. As a child, after she had been resurrected first by Sesshomaru, then by his mother, she had blithely carried on living to the fullest as if nothing had happened. For a time, she had not really even remembered the details of how she had been killed.

But with maturity came nights of starting awake, bathed in a cold sweat, close to screaming but always holding her voice back in time to avoid waking Kaede and Shippo as she rose from the violent memories that made her experience all over again the terror of wolf fangs ripping into her flesh, the appalling pressure of powerful jaws crushing her skull, an eyeball bursting, then the lunge at her throat that plunged her into a darkness from which no memory or sensation survived to plague her now.

She remembered her second death too, but that had been so sudden – she had barely had time to see the hound from the netherworld, so it did not haunt her as much as her mauling by the wolves.

She said nothing because she did not want her friends to worry. She did tentatively ask Jaken about the time he had been cut down by Kaijinbo and revived by Sesshomaru's Tenseiga, hoping to find an echo of her visions in his thoughts, but her former demon-babysitter was well over that incident and even clung proudly to it as a sign of hope that he mattered to Lord Sesshomaru. She would find no deep understanding from him there.

If only she could speak to Kohaku about _his_ death. He would understand. But she knew the circumstances of his death had and always would torment him in ways hers could not hurt her, because he had slain his beloved father and comrades with his own hand under Naraku's spell, and almost killed his only sister, before dying under a hailstorm of arrows from the guards of the castle that had hired them.

So she could never talk to him about it, despite his being the most likely person to know what she was going through. Since he had grown into a man, he always remained calm and smiled gently at his friends no matter what was going on beneath the surface. But he would be irreparably scarred by his memories to the end of his days, and she was not heartless enough to torture him further by probing the paper-thin façade of his soul-deep wounds merely to seek some reflection of her own suffering.


	3. Fleeing

"What are you doing out here?" Kohaku's voice came from above them with a chuckle as he circled the air on Kirara, the fire cat who had been Sango's faithful companion and partner in battle before teaming up with the young man. "Where are the children?"

Inuyasha, Kagome, Miroku, Sango and Rin looked up and waved at him as they trudged through the snow and ice of an open, slightly hilly space between two forests. They were five miles from the village.

"Don't worry about your nieces and nephew – Kaede-sama is looking after them!" Miroku called out to him.

"We came out to look at a demon carcass we heard was lying around here," Kagome explained when Kirara landed and Kohaku dismounted. "Some of our people went to visit their relatives in the village over that hill, and saw the body on their way back. But when we arrived, it was gone."

"Could it have disintegrated?" Kohaku asked, for some demons were born of sorcery, or had grown to base their existence so fully on magical life forces that when they died, their bodies vanished. Others with more natural origins left corpses behind, as solid as any human's or animals, to be burnt or otherwise disposed of.

"No, it was dragged away," Inuyasha said. "You can see the marks in the snow and on the exposed ground, leading towards those hills to the west. I'm getting a very strong smell of ookami, so I guess the tribes living not far from here must have decided to use the remains for weapons or materials from the bones and skin."

"It's not Koga's pack," Sango said to her brother as she stroked Kirara's face. "They're based leagues away from this area."

"Keh, obviously not," Inuyasha scoffed at the suggestion for Kohaku's benefit. "I'd know his scent anywhere, and there's no trace of it here. We haven't seen wolf-boy in years. He's probably gone and got himself killed – he's always stupidly charging into fights without so much as half a thought!"

"Now why does that description sound so familiar, I wonder?" Miroku asked, stroking his chin and rolling his eyes at the hanyou.

Before her mate could turn the exchange into an argument, Kagome intervened: "Inuyasha, please don't suggest that Koga's been killed – I know you would be as sad as any of us if he really died, and he would be just as upset if anything happened to you."

He softened when he looked into her eyes, and contented himself with a tiny scowl. "I think, though, that it's a pack with a close relationship to Koga," he said to her. "The villages closer to what I think is their forest territory another few miles from here used to suffer lots of wolf attacks, which completely stopped after you made friends with that mange-ridden fellow."

"After _we_ made friends with him," Kagome sighed. "And he's not mange-ridden."

"Well, _you're_ the only one who got close enough to know," Inuyasha growled.

"Stop that. We settled this years ago," she said quickly, when she saw that Rin was shivering from more than the cold, and remembered what they had gathered from Sesshomaru about how she had come to be part of his pack.

"Rin, why did you come out here with them? You look absolutely frozen," Kohaku remarked, as his eyes lit on the only member of the party who had not said a word to him yet, and was pulling her winter robe as tightly around her as it would go.

"I'd finished my chores, and Kaede-sama didn't need my help with anything, so I came along out of curiosity," she confessed.

"Your footwear is all wrong for an outing in this kind of weather," Kohaku laughed, looking at her bare toes peeking out her flimsy slippers. "It's time Sesshomaru-sama got you a pair of boots!"

"He _did_ give me a pair of boots," Rin said, turning red in the face. "But I'm not used to wearing them…"

"Come on, Kirara and I will give you a ride back to the village," the young man said. "I won't ask the others because if the walk gets too hard for Kagome-sama and my sister, their husbands can always carry them!"

Rin noticed that Sango, Kagome and Miroku were giving one another knowing smiles, while Inuyasha looked annoyed by the emotional undercurrents he sensed from his wife and friends. She hesitated, self-conscious now, but Kagome nudged her towards Kohaku, and he helped her onto the fire cat.

Her kimono wasn't particularly tight, but this would have been much easier for her if she had been wearing hakama. As a child, she had sometimes hiked up her yukata skirts to ride Ah-Un, but at fourteen-and-three-quarters, she couldn't be flashing that much leg – again, she envied the freedom Kagome had once had to run everywhere in her jaw-droppingly short skirt, although the miko now dressed far more conventionally.

So she sat side-saddle – a term she had once heard Kagome use (not that Kirara _had_ a saddle).

"Better hold on tight to her to make sure she doesn't fall off!" the miko said brightly to Kohaku.

Kohaku didn't seem to mind, but his not minding it was so respectful and polite that Rin felt he would have acted the same way if he had been asked to carefully transport a piece of baggage. If he had blushed like Inuyasha sometimes did when Kagome showed him affection, or smirked cheekily like Miroku, she might have some hope that he was aware of her as a woman. But this neutral manner – oh dear, it was exactly the way he would have helped Kaede-sama onto a mount!

He got on behind her and wrapped one arm about her waist, and she held on to that same arm with one hand, while her other hand lightly grasped Kirara's fur. These precautions were probably unnecessary, as Kirara wouldn't have let either of them fall in the course of a normal flight – but you could never tell when an attack might come from another demon, and the ride would suddenly turn into a high-speed dodge-and-chase session.

"How are you, Rin?" Kohaku asked in his usual friendly way as Kirara took flight. "I hardly see you these days, now that I'm away so often."

"I'm fine," she replied with a smile. This was as close to pure bliss as she could get, and she didn't want the ride to end.

"I wanted to talk to you about something before I left the village two weeks ago, but the right opportunity didn't come up."

Rin's heart skipped a beat. He sounded more serious than usual. Could he be…?

"What is it?" she forced herself to ask lightly.

"I heard from my sister that in the autumn, you refused a proposal of marriage that one of our farmers sounded out Kaede-sama about, on behalf of his son?"

"Yes," she murmured. Would he now ask her for himself?

But he went on to say: "I know the boy, Masahiro. He's a good lad. The proposal was probably driven more by his parents than by himself, but from the few occasions I've spoken to him, he has struck me as decent and likeable, and he has a kind look in his eyes. He's your age too."

"Did his father ask you to speak for him?" Rin asked softly.

Kohaku laughed. "No, of course not! You may scold me for poking my nose into what is none of my business, but when I heard about it, I thought it was a pity that you immediately refused to even hear the family out. You could do worse than Masahiro – unless Sesshomaru-sama has a wealthier suitor in mind for you."

"He doesn't," she said very quietly, feeling miserable, for although Kohaku was finally acknowledging that she was old enough to marry, nothing in his words or manner indicated that he had thought of her for himself. She knew she had to gamble it all on this moment, so she went bravely: "Sesshomaru-sama has no one in mind for me. He's leaving it to me to decide. And I have decided that I would never want to be married to Masahiro, or anyone, except…"

Here, she looked him full in the face. She had the satisfaction of seeing in his eyes that he knew exactly what she was saying, and the despair of seeing too that his answer would be heartbreaking for her. He would say that he knew how she felt about him, and that she mustn't think of him in such a way, because he looked upon her as a little sister. That message had always been written all over his face with regard to her, and she had always hoped that it would eventually change. But if he spoke the words now, he would set them in stone, and the writing would never turn into anything else.

"Rin, I know you think of me as…"

"Kohaku, please don't say it," she hastily interrupted him, desperately hoping he wouldn't utter the words so that they might still have a chance to take on a different shape and a different message. "Please. I understand."

But he was insistent about communicating what was on his mind. "I know you think fondly of me because we grew up together, and we know things about each other that no one else does. But you mustn't think of me that way, Rin. I don't intend ever to marry, and you're a good girl – you're really such a good girl, so precious to your guardians and friends – I want you to be happy with someone else, not waste your thoughts on me, or your life with me."

Though she had known it was coming – had almost known to the very last word exactly what he would say – hearing it cut her to the core, and in her head she was screaming out questions: _Why, Kohaku? Why won't you ever marry? Why would I waste my life with you? Aren't I good enough and close enough to you to make you change your mind about marriage?_

None of those questions would form into words on her tongue. She couldn't bring herself to speak. The tears simply welled up in her eyes and spilled down her face, and she felt so ashamed to be crying in front of him that she turned her head and stared down at the snow-covered land passing below them. He was sensitive enough to look away the moment the tears came, and not stare at her. Once they reached the village, he let her down from Kirara's back, and she ran for Kaede's hut.

She was a fast runner – even compared with boys her age, and even in footwear she didn't like – so after rounding two other huts, she was sure that even if he had followed her, he wouldn't have seen that she slipped behind the hut instead of entering it. She couldn't face Kaede-sama and Shippo looking teary, because they would insist on knowing what had happened. Kaede was preparing the evening meal, and from the sound of it, Shippo was trying to help with both the cooking and the babysitting, so she hoped the smell of food filling his sharp little nose would keep him from sniffing her out.

She waited till Kohaku had left the area and returned to his hut, and checked that Kaede and Shippo had not noticed her presence. Then she slipped along the back of the village and headed for a side path leading to the forest. It was guarded only by one boy, who was cold and grumpy and had been instructed to raise the alarm only if strangers tried to enter the village, not if residents tried to leave, so she had no trouble hurrying past him as if she were on urgent business.

Rin had gathered that in the days before Naraku was destroyed, especially when Inuyasha had been sealed to the Goshinboku tree, the village had been diligent about security, with daily patrols sent out to the forest. But since Naraku's end, and warriors like Inuyasha, Miroku, Sango and Kohaku, then later Kagome taking up residence in the village, not to mention Sesshomaru's regular visits, the patrols became weekly ones, and lookouts were more casually posted around the ways leading into and out of the settlement.

Unlike the main path, almost always busy with villagers moving back and forth between the fields and the edge of the forest or the Bone Eater's well, this side route was rarely used because it was always muddy and full of sharp rocks, and the path never stayed clear even though the villagers tried to keep it trodden down and free of scratchy branches that would tear their clothes and whip against their faces.

It suited her well today, because apart from the boy, she met no one who could see how red her eyes were in the winter light. But as she ventured deeper amongst the trees along this deserted, less familiar path, past underbrush that snagged her robe, she wondered if she should have chosen a corner of the village to cry in instead, for it did get dark earlier in winter, and the air and ground were horribly cold.

She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand, stopped along the overgrown forest path, and looked about her. No dangerous demons were nearby. She was sure of that. She had a slight ability to detect demon ki, though not as well as better-trained, more spiritually aware humans. Nothing in that department was troubling her senses right now. If a hostile demon was around, Shippo would have sensed it long ago and yelled for help in taking it down well before it came near the village.

Reassured by that – perhaps falsely – she wandered on, lost in thought. Somewhere in the juvenile recesses of her brain, she had a vague idea that it would serve Kohaku right if she died for good here and now from some demon attack – he would certainly miss her then, wouldn't he? But that was the child in her reacting to a fresh emotional wound; the adult she was becoming knew it was a foolish notion; she had to stay alive to win Kohaku over or grow to forget him, not die like a petulant brat just to make him feel sorry.

What good would dying do? It would only make Sesshomaru-sama very sad. He was suffering enough these days for reasons that had nothing to do with her, so she mustn't add to the anguish he hid so well behind his stoic front. Her friends would cry their eyes out too; she didn't want to do that to them. As for Kohaku, well, honestly, what was the point of dying for him? If he decided to love her eventually, she wouldn't be around to enjoy his affection if she was dead, would she? And if what fate had in store was for her to forget him over time, then what would be the purpose of dying for a man she would cease to care for?

 _Silly girl_ , she told herself, both as a rebuke for thinking such absurd thoughts, and for letting those thoughts take her mind off her surroundings. She should be paying attention to possible dangers at hand.

She heard a rustling sound near her, and felt the fine hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Worse, the sound was coming from a spot between the village and the path she was on, so she would have to get past or round whatever was causing it. Crying over Kohaku was the last thing on her mind now – so the walk had been a good cure for her tears – but at what cost? The prickling sensation on her skin grew into a shiver when she saw the figure of a man rise from the underbrush about twenty feet away from her, and move towards her.

Judging by his dressing, the badly-made sword hanging by his side, his makeshift armour and the leering look on his face, he was a bandit of sorts. That he was alone suggested he had been separated from his band, or kicked out of it for some offence against his fellow rogues. Shippo wouldn't pick out the scent of just one human at some distance from the village – people were constantly passing through the forests, especially in the daytime, to hunt animals, forage for food or travel between settlements.

She had no idea if he was planning to steal from the village, or lying in wait for folk to rob – but she was dressed as plainly as any other villager, so he could not possibly imagine she had any valuables on her. Perhaps he had it in mind to abduct her and rape her. Should she try to take him on? She had a dagger under her robes, and she could grab a branch as a weapon, but he was tall and well-built, and she might not be able to maim him badly enough to get away. Should she flee? She was fast, but could she outrun a grown man? Should she scream in the hope that Shippo's or Kirara's sharp ears would pick up her cries? She was quite far from the edge of the village, and could not be certain that her demon friends would hear her.

She didn't know what the best option was, but doing nothing was worse than making the wrong move, so she screamed for help at the top of her voice in the direction of the village, then ran for it in silence, further into the forest, hoping to lose him and hide somewhere till he was gone. But he caught her and brought her down, and with a shock, she hit the forest floor, pinned in a rough embrace, overcome by the stench of foul breath that bore more than a hint of sake, his filthy clothes and unwashed body.

She screamed again, but he clamped a hand over her mouth. She fought to get a hand inside her robes to reach for her dagger, and bless the gods, her fingers found its hilt. She drew it from its leather sheath strapped to her side and stabbed the man's neck with it. He fell away from her, bleeding and enraged by the unexpected injury, and she seized the chance to flee again.

But she was running into an area she didn't know at all, much too far from the village now, and if he caught up again, she would be done for. As she sprinted for dear life, she looked back to see if he was in sight – and that momentary glance resulted in her stumbling through some underbrush and crashing out on the other side of it, only to find herself rolling down a steep slope, scratched by twigs and whipped by tendrils, into a dark copse at the very bottom of where the forest floor dipped.

She could hear running water nearby. She must be near a river, and this part of the ground must have dipped years ago, sinking because the water made it much softer and damper than the ground closer to the village.

She held her breath and lay very still, glad that her winter robe was a shade of brown that she hoped would offer camouflage. She peered up through the dense underbrush at the higher ground from which she had tumbled. The bandit appeared after several minutes and looked around, still pressing a hand to the wound on his neck, but passed the spot when he did not see her.

Rin breathed again and waited a while longer before inching backwards out of the copse, only to almost die of fright when her senses told her that something was very near, right before a voice sounded just behind her: "What have we here?"

The voice was not unfriendly, but Rin was not listening. The scent and youki of wolf filled her nostrils and assaulted her spirit, and her logical mind ceased working as her instincts took over. In a blind panic, she lashed out in the direction of the voice and screamed as she scrambled out of the copse, heedless that the bandit was not far away, and that her shriek would draw him back.

"What the hell are you doing?" the demon demanded, in a bemused tone. But again, she could not hear his tone of voice or sense the fact that he meant her no harm. Her entire being had retreated into a primal part of her soul where the world around her was a mass of horror, and she could hear, see, smell and feel nothing but the memory of the stink of wild wolf and powerful jaws grinding her bones to shards.

Not unexpectedly, the bandit returned to the spot, and that was when her eyes seemed to open, for she saw now that the demon with her looked vaguely familiar – fur on his arms, shoulders and lower legs, a band around his brow, more fur wrapped about his hips, and a bushy tail. But before she could process where she had seen him before, he flew at the bandit and dispatched him with one swipe of his claws, muttering something about evil men who tried to take advantage of helpless girls.

The sight of the man's torn flesh and spurting blood sent her back into that primitive corner of her soul again, and she backed away in terror from the demon, failing to see the kindness in his startling blue eyes or hear the words from him which indicated that he had been acting in her defence, but only seeing his fangs and his claws and smelling nothing but the scent that screamed wolf to her.

In her unreasoning terror, she backed away from him, towards the sound of the running water, and found herself on the edge of a sheer drop, where a deep, swift-flowing river had over hundreds of years carved this part of the forest into two halves, separated by a great chasm.

She saw the demon stretching a hand out to her, but her mind understood only the claws at the tips of those fingers, and did not grasp the look of surprise and shock in his eyes when she backed further away, and threw herself off the forest edge into the river far below.


	4. Warmth

Koga was stunned when the girl jumped off the lip of the ravine and plunged towards the river. At once, he dived after her and only just managed to cushion her against the impact with the swift-running water at the very last second, when he pulled her into his arms and twisted over so that his own body took the brunt of the fall.

Somewhere in the handful of seconds during which they fell through the air, it occurred to him why she looked so familiar – she was the little girl who used to travel with Inuyasha's older brother, the shy one who had trembled and hidden herself behind the twin heads of her dragon mount when he'd tried to say hello to her about six years ago.

As he caught her in his arms, he vaguely recalled Kagome once mentioning that the girl was afraid of wolves, but no one had told him why. Had she been so terrified of him when she saw he was an ookami demon that she had preferred to commit her life to the river than to trust him? What an impulsive creature!

They hit the water and went under, and he fought to find his bearings. He would live even if he was deprived of air for some time, but she wouldn't. So he looked swiftly around him while submerged, determined which way was up, and kicked hard against the water to rise through it quickly, clutching her to his chest. Her head fell back against his shoulder as they broke the surface, and her eyes were closed. She had either fainted from the fall or from the impact, but she was alive, for he could feel her blood pumping strongly through her veins.

The water was deep, and the current fast, and he could find no solid footing from which to leap back up to the banks. They had already been carried a good distance downriver, so he fought the current and swam for the south bank, pulling her after him and holding her head above the water. The river was icy cold; she would not survive much longer if she remained immersed in it in these temperatures.

When at last his feet found some purchase, he jumped clean out of the water and onto the bank, and set his light burden down on solid ground to check on the state she was in. He could just make out the sound of her heartbeat over the roar of the rushing water, and could see her chest rising and falling, so his next step was to find her shelter and get her warm. If he didn't, she would die or fall seriously ill from exposure.

He couldn't waste precious time making his way back to Inuyasha's village, which he had been on his way to when he heard the girl scream as she ran from the bandit, so he lifted her into his arms and leapt to the top of the ravine, looked quickly about in the deepening twilight, and spotted a den which was being used by a bear – an animal bear, not a bear demon, thank goodness, because the latter would have taken a fair bit longer to deal with.

He laid her down on the forest ground, entered the den, hauled a very surprised, plump and sleepy creature out of it, and gave it such a fright that it took off into the woods, probably not to return for some time. Even if it did, he could keep it at bay until the girl had recovered.

He carried her into the den, removed her layers of soaked-through, freezing-cold clothing, and wrapped himself around her after quickly pulling off his armour, to share as much of his body heat with her as he could. As a canine-demon, he naturally had a higher body temperature, and although he was as wet-through as she was, he would be able to keep her warm.

He did not fail to notice that she was a pretty little thing, with hair as wild as Kagome's, and just growing into a woman, but he tried to be honourable, to keep his eyes and hands off her pert breasts, and not cast his gaze any lower down her body. It was a rather difficult job, but after having smelt the lust rolling off the bandit as he had attacked the girl, and having felt thoroughly disgusted by it, he was not about to try victimising her himself.

Sometimes, Koga thought, having a sense of honour was such a pain. Because holding a nubile, naked female against one's body and not doing a thing about it was a bit more than any hot-blooded demon should have to take.

...

Rin awoke to the aura of wolf youki, the overpowering smell of some wild animal, the prickling of winter cold attacking the blanket of warm air that seemed to have settled around her skin, and the realisation that she was held in someone's partially fur-covered arms… and that she was as naked as the day she was born.

Her throat tightened in terror and she tried to scream, but the cry died somewhere inside her. She struggled mutely and violently against the one who clasped her from behind and pressed his body against hers – she had no problem at all discerning that he was _very_ male and very wolfish, despite not being able to see a thing in the darkness.

"Stop that!" he growled into her ear as he seized her wrists and pulled them back against her own chest. "What are you doing, girl? Be still – I'm trying to help you!"

His spoken words seemed to override her instinctive horror of wolves which might have taken over completely had he said nothing. Rin momentarily forgot he was a wolf and only cared right now that he was a male stranger, and she found her tongue in time to splutter furiously: "H- _help_ me? I-if you're trying to help me then where are my clothes? And why are you pressing your – your _thing_ – up against me, you _HENTAI_?"

"My 'thing'?" he asked, grappling with the fact that she was now assaulting his shins with her heels and he had to try to stop her from kicking him while not hurting her. Eventually, he had to hook his legs around hers from behind and completely enclose her within all four of his limbs, as if she were a bolster. "Oh, you mean my cock–"

"Don't _say_ that word! You sick pervert!" she shrieked, fighting uselessly against his strength. "And get – get IT out of my behind!"

"I'm really, really sorry, girl, that my _penis_ offends you by being pushed up against your pristine _backside_ ," Koga growled in exasperation, through gritted teeth. "But it wasn't as if I could take it off and put it aside while trying to _save your life_ by keeping you from freezing to death after rescuing you from your suicidal leap into that bloody river – what the hell did you do that for, anyway? And I'm really, _really_ sorry that 'it' is still pushed up against you now that I can see you are no longer freezing to death, because I still have nowhere else to put it while we're in this position, with me trying to prevent you from adding more bruises to my shins. Besides, it's not as if I've put it _in_ you, is it? And I'm sorry if 'it' is a bit hard right now, because you are after all a rather pretty thing, and I can't help it if…"

"I _KNEW_ it – you're a twisted pervert!" she yelled. "GET OFF ME!"

"Will you keep your voice down, you silly girl? Do you want to attract every predator for miles around? We're lucky enough as it is that that bear hasn't come back yet!"

"B-bear?" she stammered. "What bear?"

"The fat thing I hauled out of here so I could give us a shelter to keep you warm in, you foolish child. Can't you smell its stench all over this place? Now if you stop struggling, and promise me that you won't do anything stupid like try to run naked out into the forest, I will let you go, and _then_ I can get my 'thing' off your posterior."

She stilled herself.

"Promise me that you won't run?" he asked.

"Yes! Just get off me, you disgusting wolf."

"Now _that_ will really encourage me to go to the rescue of the next damsel in distress I come across. For goodness' sake, girl, I'm not going to hurt you. I give you my word that I didn't molest you while you slept, and I won't do anything to harm you now – I know who you are, all right? Kagome and Inuyasha, the slayer and the monk – they're all my friends."

She calmed down further at the mention of the names she knew so well, and he carefully released her. She scrambled away from him deeper into the little den, keeping her back to him and her derriere firmly planted on the ground, while covering her breasts with her hands. She turned her head towards him, even though she knew she would be able to see nothing in the night, and shuddered again at the smell of his wolf fur, but she feared him as an individual much less now that he had spoken to her properly – unlike the wordless, animal pack that had killed her – and she remembered now that when she had encountered him by the ravine, his eyes had been kind, and he had looked familiar.

"I also know you're the child who used to travel with Inuyasha's big brother," he said. "I remember meeting you before."

She recalled now where she had seen him, apart from the time when she had watched from the doorway of a hovel as he sent his pack out to kill and eat her and the other humans in the village she had lived in at the time. Some time after she had been brought back to life, he had encountered Sesshomaru-sama, Jaken, Ah-Un and herself on the way to hunting Naraku down, and she had been so frightened of him on that occasion that she had wished she could vanish into Ah-Un's saddlecloth.

"Yes," she said. "Years ago."

"Yeah," he agreed. "You're a sight bigger now."

She pressed her arms more tightly over her breasts and turned her head away from him again, and he had the good grace to redden slightly when he realised that she might have thought he was talking about her chest, when he really hadn't meant that at all.

"I didn't mean…" he began.

"You'd better not have," she muttered icily. "And where are my clothes?"

"I'm afraid I didn't have time to build a fire, so they're still completely wet, and in a heap over there – not that you can see where right now. I'm sorry that I have nothing suitable to clothe you with either. All the fur you may have felt on my body earlier isn't just adornment – it is actually my fur, so I can't give it to you to wear."

"Oh."

"Look, just stay put and I'll get a fire going, then we can dry your clothes, all right?"

She nodded unenthusiastically, knowing that the process wouldn't be quick, which would mean having to spend even more time with this ookami demon who sounded decent enough for a wolf, yet had a tongue as coarse as Inuyasha's, and uttered double entrendres without a thought.

"By the way, my name's Koga."

"I know," she said. "I didn't recognise you by the river, but I remember you now."

She didn't offer him her name, and after waiting a second in vain for it, he strode out into the surrounding forest and gathered materials to start a fire with – it would be a tough job in the cold and dampness of this winter night, but his demon strength meant that he would be more likely to get a spark of some sort off stones and twigs, and a lot faster, than a human could.

After a fair amount of time, he got a fire going, and heaped more twigs and leaves over it to make it bigger. Then he returned to the den, picked up her wet clothing, and carried it out to the fire to dry it the best he could.

She could see him clearly now, when she looked out of the den at his figure stooping beside the flames, holding her inner robe close to the heat. She blushed at the thought that this male she barely knew was handling her garments, but there was no other way to get them dry – she could hardly squat naked by the fire to dry her own clothes while he looked on, could she?

He concentrated mainly on drying the thinnest inner garments, because the thick winter robe would have taken all night, and if there were other demons around, then they certainly didn't have all night. When at last the white fabric seemed sufficiently dry not to make her even colder than she already was, he carried it back into the den and handed it to her.

"Put this one on first. The other layers are thicker and would have taken far too long to dry. But we can leave them there next to the fire for a bit longer. Would you like to come outside to warm your hands?"

She nodded and wrapped the white underlayer about her body, then rose and went over to the fire. It felt good to have that warmth and light in the darkness of this winter night, out in the wilds, and she knew now that if Koga had not stripped off her wet clothes and curled himself around her in that den, she would have died from the cold.

"Thank you for saving my life," she said softly.

"Don't mention it."

As they warmed themselves by the fire while it burned on, he was puzzled by the emotions he sensed from her. She appeared by now to be unafraid of him, personally, and yet she seemed repulsed by what he was. Again the memory came to him of Kagome mentioning that Lord Sesshomaru's little ward was afraid of wolves, but he didn't know the story. He had no idea that she was among the villagers his pack had once killed for food.

Humans, back in those days, had been nothing to him but a good source of nourishment for his four-legged family members, until he had come to care for Kagome, and later for the female slayer, the monk and the half-demon. Then he had ordered an end to all attacks on humans by his own pack and other groups that swore allegiance to him. It was better this way too. Humans were growing greatly in number, and when the ookami ceased to trouble them, they in turn left them alone except on those rare occasions when the paths of a human hunter and wolf hunter clashed.

Kagome had also told him before that in the future, humans would number in the billions, a figure his mind could not even wrap itself around, and that they would begin to kill for the sake of killing and destroy everything good on the earth for their own selfish reasons. But that would be later, she said. And perhaps if they did their best in these times to teach whoever they could about the value of all life, they could change the future.

Koga doubted that. It was not only humans who were voracious, but demons too. And even among demonkind alone, endless slaughter, internecine warfare, ungovernable aggression and sheer bloodthirstiness had decimated their numbers to the point where people were outnumbering them. But one thing they all agreed on, humans and demons, was the need to exterminate all youkai beasts that were nothing more than killing, eating machines – the gigantic ogres, enormous worm, snake and insect demons – anything that could not be reasoned with or controlled, for these wreaked far more destruction on the earth than any billions of humans could in the future, he was sure.

He called himself back to the present and gazed over the fire at the girl across from him. She reminded him a little of Kagome, especially with her enormous brown eyes, her wild, unbound hair and petite frame. He had once hoped to make the miko his woman, and he still cared greatly for her as a friend, but ever since he learnt that she had chosen Inuyasha as her mate more than two years ago, he had done the decent thing and backed off, and now was able to see her as a sister and dear friend just as his pack brothers Ginta and Hakkaku did.

"How's Kagome?" he asked the girl now.

"Kagome-sama is very well," she replied.

"Has that mutt given her any children yet?"

"No. She says they're in no hurry. And please don't call my uncle a mutt."

"Hmph. If you say so. He'll always be mutt-face to me. So his big brother adopted you, did he? Unusual thing for a demon to do."

"Sesshomaru-sama is no ordinary demon."

"Yeah, I can tell. Are he and mutt-face still… you know…?"

"Things are complicated," she pronounced as sagely as her nearly fifteen years of life would allow her to, which amused Koga greatly, for he was pushing three hundred.

"I'll bet. If I had a brother you'd never catch me with my tongue in his mouth, but that's just me. If Kagome has no complaints, who am I to comment?"

"Kagome-sama has no complaints," Rin said stiffly.

"Heh – she's always been a remarkable character, that woman. She was pretty hot-tempered back then, but I liked that fire in her."

"She's much calmer these days. She says she was only a child back then, and she's grown up now."

"Lucky mutt-face. He doesn't deserve her," he murmured. Rin did not respond, so he continued: "You've grown up a lot too. You're a woman now. And you're really very pretty even when you've just been dragged wet as a drowned sparrow out of the river, if you don't take offence at my saying so."

"Thank you, but not everyone thinks so."

"Oh, come on. Who wouldn't think so? Someone with holes for eyes, perhaps. What? Did someone spurn you?"

She blushed and stood up. "If you don't mind, I'd like to return to the village now. My friends must be worried sick about me."

"They're probably out searching for you," he agreed, rising to his feet too and putting out the fire, then fetching his armour from the den and strapping it on. "We'll travel back along the river before cutting through the forest once we're level with the village – that way, we're more likely to run into a search party from there."

She gathered up the wet clothes she wasn't wearing, and draped them over her arm.

But Koga said: "I'll tie those around my waist – best for you not to hold anything cold or damp – you were frozen enough as it was earlier, and I don't want you dying from a chill now, after all I've done to keep you alive."

She had lost her slippers in the scuffle with the bandit, and the ground was cold, so he offered at once to carry her, and after hesitating for a few moments, she let herself be lifted onto his back, the way she so often saw Kagome being borne by Inuyasha whenever they travelled far or over ground that would have been hard for the priestess to negotiate by herself. Her inner kimono was sufficiently thin and loose for her to grip his sides with her knees, but she flinched when his hands went under her thighs.

"Sorry if where I'm putting my hands upsets you too," he said casually. "But I don't mean anything forward by it, and it's the best way to hold you securely to my back."

When she said nothing, he took off through the woods, following the path of the river upstream, back towards her village.


	5. Clues

Kohaku's heart raced when he saw Inuyasha swoop down on something he had scented deep in the forest, and heard Kagome call out to him and Miroku as they rode Kirara a little way behind the couple: "He's found her dagger and slippers!"

As Kagome jumped off her mate's back, Kirara flew up to where Inuyasha had found the weapon and footwear. Kohaku's heart ceased racing right then and almost stopped dead when he saw the blade coated with blood.

"Inuyasha…" Kagome began in a shaky voice when she noticed the blood too.

"No – it's not her blood," the half-demon reassured them, as he sniffed the blade. "It's human blood, but not that of anyone we know. They went this way…"

He led them deeper into the forest, following a trail that Kirara was also picking up, until they reached the body of a man, lying sprawled over the icy ground beside a little copse at the base of a slope. They found the mark of Rin's dagger in his flesh, but he had plainly died of wounds that had been inflicted not by a blade, but by a vicious set of claws.

"Wolf-boy?" Inuyasha murmured to himself as his nose picked up yet another scent.

"Koga?" Kagome asked him.

"His scent seems to have come from that direction," Inuyasha said, indicating the woods to the south. "But it ends here. Both his and Rin's, right over… here."

"They must have fallen into the river," Miroku said, joining Inuyasha in peering over the lip of the ravine.

"Rin wouldn't survive a fall like that, unless Koga…" Kagome speculated.

"He must have," Miroku responded to what he guessed she was thinking. "If he was here, and Inuyasha says his scent ends at this spot along with hers, he must have gone in after her or jumped in with her to get away from something else."

"There's nothing else," Inuyasha told them, sniffing the air and the ground. "Just this dead man and their scents."

"He's dressed and armed like a bandit. He must have attacked Rin back there," Miroku said, analysing the clues. "She must have drawn her dagger to defend herself and stabbed him, then run over here. He must have chased, only to find Koga waiting for him. Perhaps Rin lost her footing and fell into the river, and Koga jumped in after her."

Kagome looked thoughtful. "Maybe not. Rin is able to sense demon ki to some extent, and her eyes would also have told her clearly that Koga was a wolf youkai. She would have recognised him anyway, from the time her former village was overrun and the people slaughtered by his pack. I think she was terrified enough of him to jump into the ravine."

Inuyasha nodded in agreement with his mate. "That's what I think too."

Kirara mewed, but Kohaku said nothing. He felt absolutely miserable. From the moment the others had returned to the village that afternoon to discover that neither Kaede nor Shippo had seen Rin, and had gone to ask him where she was, he had silently prayed to every god he thought would listen to him to please keep the girl safe. He had immediately admitted to having said some things that had upset Rin, and confessed that he had not actually seen her enter Kaede's hut after she had dismounted from Kirara. Neither Shippo nor Kirara had heard or smelt or sensed anything wrong after that.

Some quick questioning of the boys who were posted as lookouts along the village perimeter turned up one who revealed that he had seen her leaving the village by the side lane. So Sango stayed behind to look after her children while her husband and brother went into the forest with Inuyasha and Kagome to look for Rin.

Now, with the discovery of her dagger, Kohaku wanted to punch himself for saying what he'd said to her. But he hadn't wanted to string her along, and had been sincere in wanting her to be happy instead of waiting pointlessly for him, so he couldn't just leave things the way they were for another five years, could he? Pretend that he didn't know, didn't see and didn't care? He was quite certain that he would never choose to marry, so how could he let this girl who was so dear to him waste her life waiting? Yet, trying to be fair to her had only driven her to… to what? To her death? To madness as she tried to flee a solitary bandit and then a wolf demon who had once killed her?

"Kirara and I will fly further down the river to see if we can spot anything," he said at once.

But Inuyasha stopped him. "No, the sun's below the horizon by now, and it's going to be a cloudy night with little moonlight. Kirara may find them, but you won't be able to see what she's spotted, or know if they're in any danger before you jump in. And you can't go about waving a lamp in front of you to light your way either – that will only tell every predator in the vicinity exactly where you are. You and Kirara stay here with Miroku. Kagome and I will head down the river and I'll see if their scent re-emerges anywhere along the bank. They may be making their way back here as we speak, so Kirara should remain here with the two of you – she'll pick up their presence long before you will."

With Kagome on his back, Inuyasha climbed down the sheer side of the ravine and raced along the river. The bank was very narrow, almost non-existent in parts, so his feet slipped into the shallow edge of the river more than once, but he did not lose his footing.

"She'll be terrified of him, Inuyasha," Kagome said softly into his right ear as she clung to his shoulders.

"I know. If that bloody bandit tried to rape her – and I think he did, judging from the scents I was getting off his body – she'll be traumatised enough as it is. Koga would be the last demon she'd have wanted to meet then – even if he saved her life, as he seems to have done."

He ran on in silence for another four or five miles, pausing to check the scents every now and again, until his nose picked up something. It was faint, because the water had washed so much away, but it was there – a tiny hint of Rin and Koga.

"Up here," he said, holding tighter to Kagome and leaping out of the ravine on the same side they had entered by.

"Should we call out for them, or check the area quietly?"

"Let's stay quiet, in case they're hiding from any danger, and we make matters worse," he said softly, as he began to scan their surroundings.

"Do you see anything?" she whispered after a while.

"Yes, there's a small den deeper into the woods over there – no, don't get off my back – you'll only trip and fall in the dark. I'm getting their scents strongly now. And bear smells."

He crept close enough to the den to see what was inside. His half-demon eyes saw, to his astonishment, that Koga was wrapped around an unclothed Rin. He could not see her face or most of her body, as the wolf demon's back was to them, but it was Rin all right, from her scent, and he knew she was naked from the fact that _all_ her clothes were piled in a sopping wet heap at Koga's feet.

He sniffed the air, but detected not a hint of sex or fear, and he guessed that wolf-boy was keeping the girl warm after their fall into the river.

He crept back towards the ravine, set Kagome down on her feet, and told her what he had seen. "Okay, so now what?" he asked his mate in a hushed voice. "If we go barging in and wake her up, she'll probably die of both shock and embarrassment. I'm sure she blacked out in the fall and hasn't regained consciousness yet, because there's no scent of her fear at all, so when she wakes up to find Koga holding her naked, she'll probably _also_ die of shock and embarrassment. What do we do? Should I call out to Koga and get his attention? He probably hasn't smelt us because that damn den stinks so badly of bear."

Kagome thought about the matter, considering the situation carefully, before saying: "Leave them. If we walk in now, he'll be embarrassed too, even though I'm sure he's only trying to keep her from succumbing to hypothermia after she fell into the water."

"Hypo-what?" Inuyasha interrupted.

"Dying from the cold," Kagome kept the explanation short. "Either way, Rin will be terrified and embarrassed, but she will be even _more_ mortified if she knows someone else besides her rescuer has seen her naked and in his arms. She's been so afraid of wolves for so long now, a bit of time alone with Koga may help to heal that fear in her. Koga would never hurt her. He won't do anything dishonourable. I should know."

Koga had once had Kagome had at his mercy back in the days when he had cared not a whit for humans, and he had not only not harmed or molested her, but had wanted to make her his mate. He hoped the wolf demon hadn't changed in that respect, because he did not want to have to explain to Sesshomaru why he had left his daughter to be raped by an ookami youkai when he could have got her out of there.

"We'll back off, but let's not go too far," he said to Kagome. "If that moron tries anything funny, we should be within helping distance."

"He won't," Kagome said. "And he's not a moron – except when it comes to fighting with you, in which case both of you are equally stupid. But all right. We'll stay close enough to hear if something goes wrong."

They withdrew to a point where Inuyasha was sure Koga wouldn't sense them unless he was specifically looking for them, and sat in a tree to wait and watch. He almost went charging in when his ears picked up Rin's screams several minutes later, but he waited a few more seconds, approached closely enough to determine that she was calming down and that there was still no hint of sex in the air, then retreated to Kagome and the tree again.

"I think she's got over her shock now. And Koga's still not molesting her. _And_ she hasn't died of fright, so Sesshomaru won't have my hide for this – I hope. I really, really hope. Because he can spank really, really hard."

"I don't want to know why you know that," Kagome said quietly.

"Sorry. Yeah, you don't," he agreed. "What? No 'sit'?"

"I haven't sat you since I came back to you, have I?" she asked, with a gentle smile.

"No you haven't," he replied, nuzzling her shoulder. "But don't remove the beads in case I go full-demon for some reason and start killing everyone in sight, okay? You're more than welcome to sit me then."

"Believe me, I won't hesitate."

"Oh, I believe you."

"What are they doing now?"

"Er, talking. But I can't make out the words. We're too far away."

"Okay, so do we leave?"

"We'll leave."

They returned to Miroku and Kohaku waiting anxiously with Kirara. They only said they had found Rin unharmed with Koga, but asleep. And as neither had seen them, and they did not want to startle her, they had decided to return as soon as they had ascertained that she was fine, and he intended her no harm, and that she wasn't _too_ frightened of him.

"But she _is_ afraid of him, isn't she?" Kohaku protested. "We should fetch her at once!"

"Hey kid, you're the one who upset her enough to make her leave the village by herself!" Inuyasha reminded him. "You want to face her now? And embarrass her further?"

Kohaku looked down at his feet. "No."

Miroku spoke up on his brother-in-law's behalf: "Kohaku meant no harm. He was speaking honestly to Rin about how he felt, because he thought that was best for _her_."

"Next time do it in the heat of summer when everyone's in so we can stop her from getting herself killed for the third time in her life, okay?" Inuyasha growled.

"I'm sorry," Kohaku murmured.

"We don't blame you, Kohaku," Kagome said kindly, putting a hand on his shoulder. He was so tall now that she had to reach up to him. "Never mind Inuyasha's grumbling. It's just his way of being worried about Rin's well-being."

"Hmph," the hanyou huffed, folding his arms.

"So… let's wait here till they come our way, then explain why we've been stuck at this same point for _hours_ by lying that Inuyasha's nose suddenly stopped working, all right?" Miroku asked. "I'm sure they'll believe that."

"We'll think of something," Kagome sighed.

...

"Are you all right?" Koga asked the girl on his back.

"Yes," she answered, but added nothing more to it.

"Not too cold?"

"No," she said.

He sighed inwardly and hurried on through the night, wondering if she would ever communicate freely with him. He liked the look and scent of her, and the feel of her body pressed against his back, but she seemed to want as little to do with him as possible.

When they were within half a mile of the spot where he had killed the bandit, he began to get the scents of her friends on the night air, and at the same time, heard voices calling her name.

"Your search party's over there," he told her to cheer her up.

She sat up, and as they came within sight of the little group, he had a suspicion that she was very close to tears because she was finally allowing the effects of the ordeal she had been through to get to her emotions.

"Rin! Wolf-boy!" Inuyasha yelled out to them. "We got your scent here, then it all disappeared into the water!"

"You have such a pathetic nose, mutt-face!" he yelled back, less to insult his friend than to distract attention from the close-to-tears girl he bore.

"I do not!" the half-demon shouted. "It's just that Kagome here got mad about something and sat me, and everything in my nose went funny after that!"

They were probably telling every meat-eating thing in the neighbourhood that a potential dinner was within striking distance, but at the moment, they didn't care.

When Koga reached them, he let Rin off his back. She went immediately to Kagome and hid her face in the miko's shoulder. The demons could smell her tears, and Kagome could feel them wetting her shoulder through her clothes as she hugged the girl, but the human men weren't sure if she was crying, so Kohaku said softly: "Rin? Are you all right?" He held up a lamp that he had lit the moment Inuyasha had told them that Koga and Rin were in sight.

To his chagrin, Rin only buried her face deeper into Kagome's shoulder and refused to look at him. Kagome held her more tightly and shook her head at Kohaku in warning.

Inuyasha took off his fire-rat jacket and put it around Rin, as she wore only a thin cotton underlayer, then decided that the two women should ride Kirara back to the village while the rest of them walked. Kagome, her arm around Rin, led her to the fire cat, who flew away once they were safely mounted on her.

"Thanks for saving her and bringing her back to us," Inuyasha said to Koga as they made their way towards the village, the human males seeing their way by the flickering light of Kohaku's lamp.

"Don't mention it," Koga replied. "I'm afraid I gave her a terrible fright – both when I appeared to get rid of that damned bandit, and when she regained consciousness, but I think she worked out pretty quickly that I don't bite."

"It's good to see your mangy hide again after so long, and even better to see you carrying her safe and sound," the half-demon told his friend and one-time rival.

"It's good to see you too, puppy, although it hurts my tongue to say anything nice to you," the wolf grinned.

"Aren't those Rin's clothes?" Kohaku asked, noticing for the first time the kimono tied around Koga's body, overlapping the fur that girded his hips.

"Oh yeah, sorry – I had to take them off her because she would have frozen to death otherwise. I didn't molest her. I swear that on the graves of my ancestors. What the devil was she doing out here all alone, anyway?" Koga queried.

Kohaku felt a little snarl rising into his throat at the thought of this wolfish creature undressing Rin, even if it was to save her life. He didn't like the thought of _anyone_ undressing Rin – she was too innocent and sweet for anybody to see her unclothed… except that he himself had asked her to consider Masahiro as a husband, and if she married him, then he would see her unclothed, wouldn't he?

Suddenly, Kohaku decided that he didn't like the idea of Masahiro seeing Rin naked either.

That peculiar realisation, paired with the feeling of guilt that he was partly responsible for her having run out so deep into the forest by herself, left him with nothing to say in reply to Koga.


	6. Acceptance

"Is my daughter not good enough for you?" Sesshomaru's deep tones suffused the air around him and seemed to sound to the ends of the village even though he had not raised his voice at all.

Rin, inside Inuyasha's hut and at quite a distance from where Sesshomaru was outdoors, could hear him perfectly well without even trying. She cringed, wondering how many other people were listening too.

"Sesshomaru-sama, it is quite the opposite," Kohaku said respectfully, bowing low to the taiyoukai who had once taken him into his pack. "It is I who am not good enough for Rin. I could never deserve to have her as my wife."

"Should that not be for Rin to decide?" Sesshomaru asked. "No human or demon I have known has ever minded having anything that was too good for him."

"I am truly sorry, Sesshomaru-sama. Everything that happened was my fault. I ask your forgiveness for having upset Rin, and for not watching over her well enough after making her so unhappy."

Rin could even see all that was going on when she looked through a little gap between the wooden planks that formed the wall of the hut near where Kagome had laid out her sleeping mat. She was resting in Inuyasha's and Kagome's home because Kaede's hut was so open to the village children, and to people dropping by for help with their spiritual and physical ailments. Her friends were concerned about her being disturbed by all those visitors when she should be recovering in private from her traumatic adventure, so on the very night she had been brought home, they had decided quickly to move her to Inuyasha's hut at least for a few days.

No one had the heart to chide her for her impulsive behaviour – no one, that was, until Inuyasha went off to look for Sesshomaru early in the morning after Rin's return, to keep him informed about what he, as her adoptive father, had every right to know. She had sensed his arrival from a little distance, peered out through the gap in the wall to see him flying through the air into the village, holding Inuyasha to his side, and emanating a protective concern for her that was unfortunately well tempered by displeasure at her foolishness.

"I would have thought you were old enough to know better than to act so impulsively as to put your life in danger," he had told her sternly once he entered Inuyasha's hut and was left alone to speak privately to her. "You know full well that your life is one that I can no longer bring back if you lose it again. But perhaps it is because you are old enough to think and feel the way you do that this happened at all."

Rin did not try to escape a telling-off by crying or trying to get his sympathy, because that would never have worked on Sesshomaru. So she took it all with quiet dignity, accepted the reprimand, said she was very sorry for acting stupidly, and that she did value the life that he, Sesshomaru-sama, and his mother, had given her twice now. When at last the tears collected in her eyes, he could see that she had done her best to hold them back, and his anger softened enough for him to put a hand on her head and tell her to rest well.

Then the taiyoukai had walked out of the hut to summon Kohaku and give him a piece of his intimidating mind. "It seems to me that Rin has decided you are the only one who can make her happy," he told the young man now.

"I am undeserving of Rin's faith in me, and I have thought for some time that I would never marry at all," Kohaku said humbly. "But now that I see how unhappy I have made her by saying what I said, I am willing to be her husband if you have no objections, Sesshomaru-sama."

Inside the hut, Rin gasped with humiliation to hear that Kohaku would feel obliged to take her as a wife purely out of guilt and to avoid displeasing Sesshomaru. She was on the brink of objecting vocally and vociferously even though she was not supposed to be able to hear their conversation, when Inuyasha spoke her mind for her.

With a snort, the half-demon told Kohaku: "Kid, if you're going to marry her just to make her happy, I don't think that will make her very happy!"

Kagome gave him a light slap on the arm for his scornful tone of voice, but otherwise said nothing, probably because she agreed with his sentiments, and Rin exhaled in relief to see that Sesshomaru too said nothing because he knew better than to believe that a marriage built on obligation would be a felicitous one for anyone concerned with it.

The taiyoukai maintained his silence for a good few moments before saying to the young man: "I have no intention of giving you to her like a gift, or presenting her to you like an object. You will receive my consent to marry only if both of you are equally happy with the decision you arrive at between yourselves. When you have both decided, you can ask me again. This is not a matter to be settled by only one party."

Then he dismissed Kohaku and spent the morning, which had turned out to be a mild one, sitting on a long wooden bench outside the hut with Inuyasha and Kagome, where they quietly discussed other matters that did not concern Rin. However, she soon came back into their conversation when Sesshomaru asked his brother: "Why was that wolf in this area?"

"Koga was visiting an ookami tribe ten miles from here," Inuyasha explained. "Realising that he was so close to this village, and not having seen us in four years, he thought he would drop in – then he heard Rin scream when the bandit attacked her. I'm sorry that this happened to her on our watch."

"Inuyasha, do not apologise for something that is not your fault," Sesshomaru said. "You were not in the village when it happened, and you reacted as quickly as you could once you found that she was missing. The responsibility lies mainly with Rin herself, although what the boy said to her certainly did not help."

"But I left her in the den with Koga…" Inuyasha mumbled, his ears drooping a little. He spoke so softly that from her spot inside the hut, Rin could not make out his words.

Sesshomaru gave him an unreadable look before saying at last: "No harm came of it in the end."

"Rin will learn much from this experience, Onii-sama," Kagome said to the demon whom she obstinately chose to address as a brother-in-law whenever they met, although he never so much as spoke her name or verbally acknowledged that they were related by marriage. "She will not act so impulsively again."

The taiyoukai looked at the miko impassively. He had kept his distance from her, and to some extent from his brother too, since she had re-emerged from the well nearly three years ago and married Inuyasha. However, he had gradually come to accept that she was now his brother's wife, and to respect the half-demon's love for her.

"I certainly expect her to learn from it," he said to Kagome. Then to Inuyasha, he added: "You do realise that I am now indebted to that wolf? If he should ask me for Rin, I will not have a good reason to refuse to hear him. You said that he seemed to take an interest in her? I thought he was in love with your mate."

Kagome reddened a little at being spoken about as if she were not sitting right there, but she did not flare up as she might have in her teenage years. "Onii-sama," she began calmly. "Koga may have courted me when we were younger and much less emotionally mature than we are now, but it was never love. We are close friends now, and he regards me as a sister. If he takes an interest in Rin, it will be for her own sake, not for mine."

Behind the standing screen that Inuyasha and Kagome had set up for her to sleep behind, Rin cringed again. Although no one was in the hut to see her, she turned scarlet and buried her face in her sleeping roll at the reminder of how much of her body and personality had been exposed to Koga last night. The things he had said to her! The language he had used!

She was a down-to-earth free-roaming child turned village girl, and had lived out in the wilds as well as in impoverished settlements where privacy was rarely to be had, so her world was one where married couples made love behind flimsy screens while their children and younger siblings slept three feet away on the other side of makeshift partitions. She had both heard and inadvertently glimpsed her fair share of sexual activity going on between husbands and wives, not to mention farm animals going at it whenever they were in heat.

However, she was also a modest young woman raised by demons of noble birth and humans who had done their best to shield her from unwelcome attention and bring her up like a cultured lady while arming her with handy farming and self-defence skills. So the experience of waking up naked in the arms of a furry demon – a _wolf_ demon, to make things worse – with a hard-on pressed against her derriere was utterly mortifying. She cringed and flushed again and again to think of what had happened.

Now, to hear Sesshomaru-sama suggest that Koga might ask for her as a mate gave her a queasy feeling. Apart from that, being discussed in such a manner by her elders was so thoroughly embarrassing, she wanted to sink into her bedroll and just disappear from this earth.

...

"So _you're_ the young man who broke her heart," Koga said when Kohaku left Sesshomaru's presence and made his way back towards his sister's hut.

The wolf was lounging against the side of a storage shed that Kohaku had to pass as he moved between the two huts, and he sounded amused – which did not amuse the young slayer. But he summoned his considerable reserves of politeness, because he owed Koga for being in the right place at the right time to prevent the events of last evening from turning into a tragedy.

"Koga-sama, I am grateful to you for all that you did for Rin last night," he said, keeping the expression on his face neutral.

"So… what's there not to like about her?" the wolf asked, out of curiosity.

Indeed, what was there not to like about Rin? Kohaku thought. She was a good girl with a kind heart, loving character and quick mind, and she was certainly pretty enough. It was just that he had never in his life thought of her in sexual terms… until last night, when the troubling image of Koga peeling her clothes off her soaking-wet body while she lay unconscious in his arms lodged in his mind and would not erase itself.

"She is all that a man like me would want in a wife," Kohaku stated evenly. "It is I who am unworthy of her."

With that, he bowed to Koga and excused himself, leaving the wolf demon looking after him with a half-amused, half-bemused expression on his countenance.

But when he reached the hut he shared with Miroku, Sango and their children, the idea of going indoors seemed unappealing. The rest of the family were inside, and the place was crowded enough even when all they were doing was lying on the floor at night and sleeping (except for Miroku, who would be getting amorous with Sango behind their screen).

When Kohaku was a small child, he had been accustomed to hearing the sounds of his parents' discreet lovemaking behind their standing curtain, but after his mother had passed away, his father had slept alone behind the curtain till the day he had died at his son's hands. And now that he was a grown man, it was a little uncomfortable for him on those nights when he was in the village, and still awake enough to know all too well what his sister and her husband were up to at their end of the hut.

Somehow, having grown to maturity surrounded by all these facts of life, he had never lusted after Rin. Or any other girl – or man. As he wandered past the hut and found a shady tree away from the homes and lanes to lie down under, he wondered if there was something wrong with him – if perhaps all that time he had spent as a dead boy walking about with a Shikon shard jammed in his back had damaged him beyond recovery and made it impossible for him to live, love and feel like other people.

He lay down on the cold, hard ground and thought about how he loved his friends, enjoyed many things in life, was an excellent demon slayer, and could empathise with others as well as or perhaps better than many people could. But these past six years, since he had been freed from Naraku's control, felt like they had been lived out by him with a layer of hazy mist between his consciousness and his existence, as if he were a detached observer of his own life.

He was sufficiently self-aware to know that part of it was his need to cushion his memories and emotions from the trauma of having killed his father and injured his only sister so badly that she still wore on her back the ugly scars inflicted by his blade. And he did not need to remind himself either that he had once wounded Kagome in the arm with the very same blade, and raised that weapon against Rin too. If he allowed himself to relive the guilt and the memories all the time, he would reach a point where he would be pleased to slice his own throat open just to end the pain.

No one, especially not a girl as cherished as Rin, deserved to be bound to someone as defective as himself. Somewhere along the way, one of the things his mind seemed to have sacrificed in order to keep him sane was his ability to feel drawn to potential marriage partners as a man of his age would ordinarily be. He had no interest in starting a family of his own, not when he had destroyed his original family as he had, and he felt no attraction to a single soul in a sexual or romantic way.

He had certainly never had a single sensual image of Rin enter his head or trouble his heart in all these years – until last night.

Thanks to that annoying wolf.

Whose face he very much wanted to flatten with his fist.

...

Later that day, Shippo went to Inuyasha's hut, looking more subdued than usual. He had not been allowed to see Rin since her return to the village last night, except very briefly when she had first been brought back by Kagome on Kirara.

"Shippo-chan," Kagome put aside the clothes she was mending and bent down to greet him with a hug when he did not hop into her arms as he usually did. She was the closest thing to a mother he had, and since her return to this world, she and Inuyasha had discussed the possibility of adopting him or at least moving him to their hut to live with them. But he had got so used to living with the grandmotherly Kaede and with Rin, and was also a little more independent by now, mixing with young fox demons he had befriended, so they had all decided to wait and see rather than disrupt a way of life that had become routine for him.

"Kagome, do you think I can see Rin now?" he asked, looking downcast.

Inuyasha had gone to the forest with Sesshomaru and Koga, so the miko had to make the gatekeeping decisions by herself. She said to Shippo: "Rin's supposed to be resting quietly, but let me take a look at her and see if she's any better. Wait here a minute, all right?"

She went indoors and peeked round the standing screen to find Rin sitting up on her mat, reading.

"Shippo is here asking if he can see you. Do you feel up to it?" the priestess inquired kindly.

"Yes," the girl replied with a tiny smile. "I'd like to see him, please. We have things to talk about."

So Kagome let Shippo in and went back outdoors, where the light was better and while the cool winter afternoon temperature lasted, to continue repairing the small tears in the sleeping garments she and Inuyasha wore, leaving Shippo and Rin alone to talk.

"Are you feeling better now, Rin?" Shippo asked, standing in front of the girl who knelt neatly back on her heels on the mat.

"Yes I am, Shippo. Thank you for being concerned about me."

"I'm so sorry that I didn't hear or sense that you were in any trouble. I don't know why I didn't pick up your scent or hear you when you called for help." He hung his head.

"It's not your fault!" Rin exclaimed, reaching out with both hands and gently clasping his upper arms. "I was quite far away, and I know you were helping Kaede with the cooking and the babysitting – you couldn't have heard or smelt much above the food and the noise the children must have been making. Kirara heard nothing too, remember?"

But he still hung his head, and murmured in a shaky voice: "I was so scared when Inuyasha and the others returned and stopped by our hut, and learnt that we hadn't seen you. They thought you must be talking to Kohaku at his hut, so they went over there, then came back saying that you had disappeared and one of the boys had seen you enter the forest by the deserted path. I was so, _so_ scared that I would never see you again, because… because the last time I had spoken properly to you, we'd quarrelled again about you not playing with me any more, and I couldn't bear to think that the angry words I'd said to you then might be the last words you would ever hear from me!"

He raised his head now, and his big green eyes sparkled with tears.

"Oh, Shippo – I wasn't angry with you then, and I knew that you didn't mean what you said. I'm sorry that we quarrelled too, it's just that I…" her words trailed off.

"I know why you've been trying to spend less time with me, Rin," he stated. "I couldn't accept it before, though I knew why you had to do it, but I really _know_ it now."

"Shippo…"

His voice trembled badly as he spoke, but he bravely made his words as clear to her as his teary sniffles would allow: "You were trying to be kind to me, because you know I've been fond of you for so long, but you always knew that it would take a long, long time for me to grow up, and by the time I'm old enough for you, you'll be… gone."

He started to sob – heaving, child-sobs that only underlined the gap between them that no one could bridge.

"I'm so sorry…" she said in a whisper barely discernible even to herself, as her own eyes began to fill.

But he heard her, and quickly said through his tears: "No, don't be. You were right to do what you did. I just want to ask you… will you now please be a sister to me?"

"Oh, Shippo," she said, pulling him into her arms in a tight hug. "I'll be a big sister to you now, and when I'm much older, I'll be another mother to you just like Kagome is, and when I die, I'll pray to the gods that when I'm reborn in whatever form, I'll come to know you somehow – you'll be bigger then, and maybe, we'll be together again." She was crying hard by now.

"Promise me that in your next life, you'll be mine?" he asked, burying his little face in her shoulder.

"If I have any control at all over what happens, I promise that in my next life, I'll be yours. So look out for my reincarnation, won't you?" she said softly.

She held him close like the child he was, and they cried together like the children they both still were, in so many ways.


	7. Courage

The hardest part was having to face everyone who had worried about her, the friends who had spent hours out in the cold in search of her, and the villagers who had caught wind of something happening to her, but could only speculate about her reasons for running off into the forest by herself.

Kagome saw how miserable she felt about it, but the older woman knew from experience that there was no better and quicker way to overcome these awkward moments than to go out and face them with as much dignity as possible, without forgetting to be humble when it was appropriate to be so.

So she gripped Rin's arms firmly and supportively, looked at her with an expression that conveyed kindness and encouragement, and simply said: "Rin, just suck it up."

Rin didn't exactly understand the phrase, but she got the gist of it, and she left the young couple's hut two days after her ordeal with her head held high, but not so high that anyone would think she was proud of acting stupidly. The first meetings with each individual she met, other than the ones who had already gone to Inuyasha's place to see her, were painful for the first minute or so as careful questions about her well-being were broached, but became more relaxed when she proved that she was fine and back to normal.

Sango and Miroku were supportive and concerned, but sensible enough not to ask her too much, and the children were no less than delighted to see their regular babysitter again. It was seeing Kohaku face to face that proved almost impossibly agonising, but she was ready with what she had to say to him once Miroku and Sango left them alone, and she got the words out of her mouth as steadily as she could: "I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused, Kohaku. I behaved like a foolish little girl, when I should have known better. I've come to my senses now, and I want to assure you that you will no longer have to worry about how I feel – I _was_ fond of you because we grew up together, but this incident has opened my eyes, and I will not act so stupidly again."

She could tell that he wanted to say something to her, but was struggling with the words. She really didn't want to hear it, anyway, for saying her piece had been painful enough. So she took the opportunity of his silence to bow fairly formally to him to emphasise her apology, then walked away, back to Kaede's hut.

She had not seen Koga yet, and she knew she would have to express her formal thanks to him, but she really didn't know how. She had been rude to him, and silent, and quite ungrateful that night, although she had uttered a few words of thanks – but he surely realised how much he had embarrassed her!

Koga had been spending his days in the woods discussing canine demon tribe matters with Sesshomaru and Inuyasha, and sometimes even bringing Shippo into the talks. But he had stayed in the village for the past few nights, at Kaede's abode. Now that Rin was moving back to Kaede's, it was understood that Koga would shift to Inuyasha's. Unlike Sesshomaru, who spent his time almost entirely out in forests or fields, never resting in a human dwelling if he could help it, Koga was used to having a cosy den to live in, and seemed to adjust better to mortal accommodation.

That evening, the wolf demon and Inuyasha returned to the village, leaving Sesshomaru at his usual spot in the forest, the one he occupied whenever he was in the area to visit Rin or his brother. Rin was back in Kaede's hut when Koga stopped by to thank the old miko for putting him up. As he came in, she knelt and touched her forehead to the ground before him, startling him, for he did not expect anything of the sort.

"Thank you once again for saving my life, Koga-sama," she said when she sat up, but kept her eyes lowered. "Forgive me for the trouble I put you through, and for being rude to you."

"Hey, don't even give it a thought," he said good-humouredly. "Just let me know the next time you decide to leap into a river – I'll be happy to save you all over again!"

With a chuckle, he left for Inuyasha's hut, leaving Rin more embarrassed than before.

...

Koga had laughed off the seriousness of Rin's expression of gratitude, but in truth, it had made an impact on him. Apart from being moved by her effort to formally thank him despite her deep-seated fear of him, his demon instincts had been triggered into alertness by her posture of submission. The image of her with her head lowered to the ground, the back of her neck bared, appealed instantly and powerfully to him, all the more because he knew she had made the choice to bow to him.

When he had saved her, she had been unconscious, and then terribly frightened, and he had not been as aroused by her nakedness and proximity as he might otherwise have been. But now her simple and deliberate gesture made images flash in his mind of his teeth gently testing the creamy skin of that delicate neck, his hands roving over her body, his weight and strength pinning her to the earth.

He shook his head to clear the images away and took a detour before presenting himself at Inuyasha's hut, because the half-demon would smell what was on his mind.

"Koga-kun!" Kagome greeted him cheerfully as he stepped through the doorway. "You're just in time for dinner!"

She was stirring a stew of sorts in the cooking pot Kohaku had given them, and from the smell of it, it was packed with beef. Inuyasha was practically drooling over the pot, and Kagome had to nudge him back with her elbow from time to time so that his head wouldn't get in the way.

"Hey puppy, if you fall in, all the better – I used to be rather fond of dog meat when I was a cub!" Koga laughed.

"Oh, sure – you mean you enjoyed _making out_ with whatever bitches you could catch because all your wolf females refused to stay in those bloody uncomfortable caves with your pig-headed pack of males!" Inuyasha scoffed.

"That's what you'd like to think!" Koga bristled. "I know perfectly well what puppy meat tastes like – cooked or raw."

"Bullshit," Inuyasha growled. "Even an ookami as uncivilised as yourself would know better than to eat a fellow canine."

"Don't be so sure. When times are hard, anything's fair game."

"Yeah – including Rin," Inuyasha grumbled.

"What?" Koga asked, wondering what he was referring to.

"Inuyasha, don't…" Kagome began.

"Well, he's got to know sooner or later, hasn't he?" the hanyou asked his mate.

"Know what?" Koga demanded.

"No one ever explained to you before why Rin's so afraid of wolves, because they didn't want to rake up ancient history. But it's only right for you to know – she's terrified of you ookami because almost seven years ago, you set your wolves on her and the other villagers at the place where you took back a Shikon shard from the guy who stole one from you. She was only a child when your pack killed her, Koga."

"Killed her? I don't understand. How…" Koga asked, confused.

"Tenseiga – Sesshomaru revived her with his Tenseiga – after your pack mauled her to death. That's why she's so terrified of wolves."

"Inuyasha," Kagome said softly, to stop him from going on. "Koga and his pack have changed since those days, and he had no idea Rin was involved in that incident."

"I didn't know," Koga said quietly.

"We know you didn't," Kagome responded gently, turning to him as Inuyasha hoisted the pot off the fire and set it down on a coaster of pleated straw and rags behind her. "Now come and eat while the food's still hot."

He sat down and ate with them, and he and Inuyasha argued no more that evening, tacitly agreeing instead to banter about other things. But delicious as the food was, and amusing as his companions were, Koga found his mind constantly going back years to the village his pack had destroyed, trying his best to recall if he had seen a girl-child among the adults, and wondering if he would have held his wolves back had he seen the terror on her little face.

...

"Ah, so now I have to save you from deadly splinters, do I?" Koga's voice came at her from outside the firewood shed.

Kaede's little pile of firewood for cooking had dwindled, so Rin had gone out to get some from the shed in which timber had been stacked up during the warmer months in preparation for winter – at least half the entire shed's supply had been cut down and chopped up by Inuyasha in the summer.

As she gathered an armful of sticks, however, a splinter had pierced her left thumb, and she had dropped the bundle, narrowly missing her toes. And of all the people and demons in the village, Koga had to be the one to be nearby when that happened.

It was three days after she had bowed to him in Kaede's hut, and in those three days, she had seemed to run into him everywhere she turned. It was almost as if he was following her around.

She didn't answer him verbally – a silly remark like that didn't really deserve a proper reply – but she did give him a polite nod to acknowledge his presence before turning away from him to gingerly prod her thumb. She tried to feel where the splinter was, for it was evening and the shed was dark, and she couldn't see the sliver of wood.

"Here, let me have a look," he said, approaching her and taking her small hand in both of his significantly larger ones.

She felt herself blush immediately as he turned her palm upwards with his left hand, bent over it, carefully closed around the splinter with the claws of his right thumb and index finger, and drew it out. As the wound beaded over with blood, he drew her thumb into his mouth and licked off the blood.

Rin gasped and tugged her hand away from him. She turned and quickly bent down to pick up the wood she had dropped. But he stopped her, saying: "Don't do that – you'll only get more splinters in your hands. Your skin's too delicate for this kind of stuff – you really should bring a thick piece of cloth along next time as a shield."

"No, it's fine – I do this all the time –" she began. But he reached down, scooped up all the firewood at her feet into his arms, and added on a few more sticks from the heaps beside them.

"Are these for Kaede-sama's hut?" he asked, turning out of the shed.

"Yes – but please let me carry them – I'm really quite used to it!" she protested.

He wouldn't let her, though, and only turned his eyes to look at her petite form trotting to keep up with him over the icy ground. Laughing, he told her: "Do allow others to help you without putting up such a fight every time. I'm sure my shins are still bruised where you kicked them in the den."

That made her go quiet, and she walked in silence beside him till they reached the hut. He strode indoors, put the wood down in a corner, and greeted the miko.

"Oh, thank you, Koga," the old lady said in surprise, glancing from him to Rin. "It's very kind of you to help us."

"Don't mention it," he said. "Anything else I can do for you?"

"No, thank you," Rin said at once.

But Kaede spoke at almost the same time she did, saying: "Didn't you say you would be leaving tomorrow, Koga?"

"Yes, I did, and I am," the wolf demon answered.

"Rin, I'm almost done with the cooking, so I don't need your help right now. Why don't you go back outside with Koga so you can say goodbye to him properly? He'll be leaving so early in the morning that you won't be able to say more than two words to him then."

It was on the tip of Rin's tongue to reply that two words were more than she had to say to him, but she bit her tongue to shut herself up and quietly walked back outside with him.

They stood in the space between Kaede's hut and Inuyasha's – awkwardly on her part, and silently on his, until he said to her: "Inuyasha told me what my pack did to you when you were a child. I'm sorry. I didn't know. We were… different then, facing desperate times, and I wasn't averse to letting my wolves treat humans as food. We don't do that any more. I'm sorry that you suffered at my hands."

A shiver ran through her. His words made so real the memory of those jaws crushing her flesh and bones, that she crossed her arms defensively over the front of her body and shuddered, as if she was horribly cold, even though this was a mild evening.

"I'm so sorry," Koga whispered, not quite knowing what to do for a moment, before making up his mind to be bold in his attempt to repair the situation.

He stepped right up to her and took her into his arms. She made a sound of protest – an almost animal-like whimper – and tried to push him away, but he had demon strength, and she was such a petite girl, and he held her easily until her resistance eased, and she rested her forehead against his chest.

Her arms, now unfolded, had stopped pushing him away, but her hands were still pressed palms-out against his body to keep him at what little distance she could. Between her brow bent to his chest like a lover's, and her hands putting up a feeble but unbreakable barrier between them, they stood together in that ambiguous place where paths can be found or closed off, and dreams of the future may live or die.

When they heard Inuyasha walking across the floor of his hut towards his door, Koga kissed her once on the cheek, then let her go.

In the morning before the sun rose, he left the village, with a promise to be back in spring.


	8. Confidence

After telling Kohaku that she was sorry for her behaviour, Rin no longer felt constrained in his presence, nor did she place any further pressure on herself to look her best when near him, or to behave in ways that she thought would appeal to him. She did try to tidy her hair and not run everywhere with no footwear on, but that was based now on the desire to reflect her age and the proper aspects of her upbringing, not to attract him or any other man.

Best of all, she felt free around him again, and could soon converse readily with him about anything, as she had when they were children. He had always been quieter and much less chatty than her, and he had not changed much in that respect, although she thought he still seemed to hold himself a little aloof, as if he was uncertain about the wisdom of getting close to her once more.

She did not think too much about it, however, for she was preoccupied with stamping out what remained of her nightmares. Since Koga had taken her into his arms outside Kaede's hut, her night visions had lost some of their bite – literally. She still dreamt of the wolves coming after her, but these nights, they did not always catch her. And when they did, the pain and terror she felt were not as intense as before. Sometimes things were a little better, sometimes a little worse, and in some dreams, Koga would be among the pack in pursuit of her, but thus far, she had always succeeded in waking herself up in time to avoid discovering what would happen if he caught her.

Those visions of him did not make her fear him more, neither did they urge her to think of him as anything more than a friend of Inuyasha's and Kagome's. She still cringed when she remembered what Sesshomaru-sama had said about his being obliged to hear Koga out if he should ask for her as a mate, and when she paired that memory with the other of how he had kissed her cheek, she felt uneasy.

Thoroughly absorbed in her thoughts about killer wolves and their wolf-demon leader as she tested the soil of the small herb garden in front of Kaede's hut, she did not immediately realise that someone was calling her name.

"Rin? Rin?" she heard the soft voice as if it came from a great distance, only to look up and realise that it was Kohaku speaking to her, and that he was standing right in front of her.

"Oh, Kohaku!" she exclaimed, from where she knelt by the bed that normally contained herbs, but whose usual leafy occupants had been uprooted and dried to preserve them through the winter. "I'm sorry – I was lost in thought!"

"They must be interesting thoughts," he remarked with his usual gentle smile.

She blushed a little, but managed to say with good humour: "Well, they weren't about you!" Then she realised how rude that must sound, and coloured again as she blurted out: "Oh – I didn't mean that you're not interesting! I meant… well, I just meant… oh dear."

But he only laughed good-naturedly and told her not to worry – he knew what she had intended to say. "Besides," he continued. "I'm really not an interesting person. I'm quite boring, actually! I do nothing other than work, and rest between jobs."

"There must be something you like to do other than your work," Rin said, setting down the tools she had been using to check if the soil was any softer and more hospitable now that winter was coming to an end.

"I don't read stories and poems or study plants like you do," he said. "I don't adore hot springs and cooking as Kagome-sama does, go wild over food and arguments like Inuyasha, or endlessly perfect my tricks like Shippo. I love my nieces and nephew very much, but I don't have a passion for guiding youngsters as Kaede-sama does. And let's not mention my brother-in-law's passions, shall we? I'm much more like my sister – she and I have no real pastimes besides what our immediate duties may be. I suppose it has to do with the way we were brought up. We trained hard all our lives to kill troublemaking demons, and there wasn't a great deal of time for play."

"What do you do to rest your mind or amuse yourself when you're not working or sleeping?" she asked, realising that she had never seen Kohaku play, even when he was a boy.

"I just find a quiet field full of flowers somewhere, and lie down with Kirara to watch the clouds go by. See? I told you I was boring."

"Watching the clouds go by can be interesting!" Rin said brightly, getting to her feet. "Seeing how they change their shape and fly through the sky or sit as still as fluffy stones brings all sorts of fascinating thoughts into my head – and some of those ideas have helped me solve problems, or to develop a better understanding of something I've read."

"I suppose so, although I'm not the kind to do anything about whatever thoughts may come, or to read much that requires too much thought!"

"Hmm," she said, gazing at him with a smile in her eyes, not quite sure what else she could say to point him towards acquiring a hobby or two.

"Actually…" he said, tentatively. "I was on my way out to one of those fields now. I know it's still cold, and most of the flowers aren't out, but one or two of the early ones are peeking out, and the weather isn't too chilly today. Do you want to come with me?"

She was surprised by his offer, as he had always been a rather solitary boy. But she was glad to have him behaving more naturally around her now, after all the awkwardness of the past year. So she cheerfully agreed and left a note in the hut for Kaede in case the elderly miko wondered where she had gone. She pulled an outer robe over her kimono and they flew off on Kirara. He held her round the waist as he had the last time they had flown together, but the air between them was relaxed now, so much more open than it had been then, and it felt almost like they were children again, flying through the skies on Ah-Un.

The field was close enough, only about two miles from the village, and the sun was coming out from behind a layer of cloud cover. Kirara lay down to rest without transforming into her smaller cat shape, so the two young people reclined against her side, drawing warmth from her great, furry body, and looked at the swirling, indistinct forms far above them. The clouds they saw high up in the sky and all the way into the horizon did not have the bright, clean-edged look of those on warmer days, some of which could appear very much like Sesshomaru's mokomoko. Today, they were wispy and blurred at the edges, merging into a sheet of bluish-whitish-greyish winter sky behind them. But they were intriguing, nonetheless, as they swirled and blended and hinted at great storms and high winds sweeping the heavens where they dwelt.

"Isn't it funny, how we sometimes fly right up to where we're sure a great fluffy cloud will be, only to find nothing but a misty, damp sort of air?" Rin murmured. "They sometimes look so much like mokomoko-sama from here, so solid and soft, but there's nothing there when we get to them."

"Only you and anyone else among our friends who has ever ridden Ah-Un or Kirara would understand that. No other human at the village would know what clouds are truly like," Kohaku responded.

"Kagome says that in her time, people can fly in machines and in great balloons of cloth filled with hot air. Those people would know."

"Kagome-sama's time sounds very interesting and wonderful, but also very frightening," he remarked. "And I wonder where all the demons went in her world?"

"Sesshomaru-sama and Inuyasha have talked about that. They believe that in a few hundred years, maybe sooner, the demons like themselves who have any intelligence and power will have learnt how to conceal their nature from humans and even from other demons, and to walk among people undetected. They often have long discussions about how to ensure that their kind survives well into an age where humans will be the most powerful creatures in the world."

"We won't be here to see it, Rin," Kohaku said soberly.

"No, we won't," she sighed. "But that is the way of all humans. I was sad about that when I was a little girl, when Jaken-sama explained to me for the first time how much longer demons live compared with us. I'm not sad about it any more, though. This is how things ought to be, and I wouldn't want to live on and on forever if there was a possibility that everyone else I loved would be gone long before me. I might have my demon friends, but what if something bad happened to them too? Then what would be the point of living for so many hundreds of years?"

"You've grown up so much," Kohaku commented, turning his face towards hers with a smile.

She didn't turn to him, but she smiled too, still staring up at the clouds.

As winter yielded to spring, they went out to the field several more times, whenever Kohaku was back in the village. They talked often of the distant future they would not live to see, and of the past they had shared, and about the people and youkai they knew. One afternoon early in the spring, as they leaned back against Kirara's accommodating flank, Kohaku finally got around to bringing up what had been on his mind for some weeks, when he asked her: "Do you ever think about the times you died?"

Startled to hear what had uppermost been in her thoughts a year ago, she looked at him wide-eyed and replied: "Yes. Often. Do you?"

"Yes."

"Does it hurt you in an almost physical way?" she asked. "To remember dying, I mean?"

"Yes. When I remember how those arrows pierced my body, I hurt in all the places where they drove into my flesh and cut into my bones."

"I hurt too when I think about the wolves. Like you, I also hurt in all the places where they bit me – my right eye, I think it burst when one of them sank its fangs into my face – it aches when I think of that."

"I wish you hadn't had to go through that, Rin."

"And I wish you hadn't had to go through what you did."

"I can't forgive myself for being so weak that Naraku could so easily control me."

"You were a child. It wasn't your fault," she said sincerely.

"It feels like my fault. I don't trust myself not to be as easily controlled again the next time some evil youkai decides he wants to take over the world, and that I would be a useful tool for him."

"Is that why you're always so distant to everyone else, even when you laugh with them and smile politely at them?" she asked.

"Perhaps. I don't really know." He sounded resigned.

"I wish you'd told me this a year ago."

"So do I."

They were silent for quite a while, before Kohaku said in a lighter voice: "We really shouldn't be discussing all these morbid things at such length, should we? But I feel better talking to you like this, because you're one of the few people in the world who can possibly understand what I went through."

"I wanted so badly to talk to you about it before, because no one else would know how I felt, but I didn't dare bring it up. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me – I don't feel so alone in my fears now."

"You're not alone, Rin."

She sensed a certain something in the tone of his voice, but she was no longer sure that she wanted to know where it would lead to, not right now, not here. As she was wondering if and how she should respond, Kirara shifted and indicated that she wanted to take a walk, so they sat up to let her go. Then Rin spread her thick outer robe over the cold ground, and they both lay back on it.

"Are you comfortable?" Kohaku asked.

"I'm quite all right."

They seemed to have agreed in reaction to some invisible signal that they would move on from what they had been discussing, so they talked desultorily about things of the future and the past that seemed to lead towards nothing in particular, and eventually shared a comfortable silence under the swirling sky. At some point, she closed her eyes and drifted off under the afternoon sun.

Something woke her – a small noise, perhaps, or a sense she had that someone else was nearby – and she opened her eyes to feel her head heavy with sleep, and realised that she must have spent quite some time in slumber.

She also discovered that her head was resting on Kohaku's arm, nestled against his shoulder, and that Kohaku was fast asleep beside her.

And Sesshomaru-sama and Koga were staring down at them.


	9. Frankness

Sesshomaru and Rin stood together in the field, under the clear spring sky.

After Rin had shaken Kohaku awake, and he had called Kirara back, the taiyoukai asked the young man to leave on the fire cat. Koga had declined a ride to the village – it would have been awkward for him to sit behind Kohaku for even a short flight – and had chosen to stroll over to the human settlement instead, leaving Rin and her adoptive father alone.

"Sesshomaru-sama…" Rin began once Kohaku, Koga and Kirara were gone. "We didn't do anything. Please don't be angry."

Sesshomaru listened to the calm tone of her voice, so much more grown-up than her childish way of speaking from years gone by, and looked at her face, which was open and frank. He said: "I am not angry with you. And I know that you were not physically intimate with Kohaku – do not forget that demons rely on all their senses far more than humans do."

"But you looked so stern – well, sterner than usual," she qualified.

"I looked stern because I was concerned for you," he said. "My last conversation with Kohaku left me with little doubt that he does not love you, but would take you as a wife out of obligation. That is not the kind of companionship I would want for you. You are my daughter, and I would want you to be happy with the one you spend your days with."

"Kohaku and I have simply become friends again," she explained. "We've been spending time together – but he has not brought up the subject of marriage, and I have not expected him to. I no longer expect anything from him other than to be what he was to me when we were both children."

"That boy does not know what he wants in life," Sesshomaru stated bluntly. "He does not know if he wants you or not. Even if he has brought up marriage, I would never choose for you to be bound to a man who hardly knows his own wishes, and who can take you or leave you with equal ease. You deserve someone who truly loves you, and knows it."

"But what if there ever is such a person, and I do not love him?" she asked, bending her head to stare at the tiny yellow and white wildflowers blooming tentatively around her.

"You wonder if it is better to be with someone who loves you more than you love him, or with someone whom you love more than he loves you," Sesshomaru commented. "I can't answer that question. We only know that our greatest hope is to be with the one who loves you as much as you love him, but life is rarely perfect."

"Did Koga come here with you because…" she trailed off, because she couldn't really bring herself to say it.

"Koga came to me to ask if I would permit him to court you," he confirmed.

Rin stared even harder at the ground near her feet. "What answer did you give him, Father?" She rarely addressed him so, as they were both accustomed to her calling him Sesshomaru-sama, but he was playing more of a traditional father's role to her than usual on this occasion, so it seemed only correct.

"I told him that I had no right to refuse his request after what he had done for you, but that I would not force him or anyone else on you. I told him that if he could win you over, he could proceed as you permitted him to, but if he could not win your heart, he was not to take you by violence."

She flushed, and only stared silently at the grass, so hard that she could see ants crawling over the individual blades.

Sesshomaru continued: "I told him that if he touched you without your consent, I would kill him so slowly that he would die by inches."

Rin managed a smile at that, although her cheeks had not lost their rosy hue from her earlier blushing. "So what am I supposed to do now?" she asked.

"You are to leave the village with us. I had originally planned for him to spend time with you there, but I see that that will not be wise if Kohaku will be looking over his shoulder. I will allow Koga some weeks with you away from the village, and you can decide if you like him."

"I can tell you here and now that while I may eventually come to think kindly of him, I will never love him," she said softly.

"Perhaps not, and I have no particular fondness for him either. But one thing I can say for him is that he is not half-hearted like your taijiya."

"Father," she spoke again. "I know very well how some demons do their courting. How far will you permit Koga to go?"

"As far as you permit him to."

"You say that, and yet you were concerned for me before all your senses told you how far I had _not_ gone with Kohaku!" she said clearly and boldly, yet respectfully. "If you don't particularly care for Koga, and will allow me to do as I please with him, then why should you be concerned even if I _had_ given myself, body and heart, to Kohaku? Forgive me, Father, but I am rather confused."

Sesshomaru considered her words for some time before giving his response: "When I decided that you should live in the village for your own well-being, I wanted you to learn the ways of humans and eventually find a husband among them. I told you little of youkai ways, because I had put you in more than enough danger by dragging you everywhere with me, and it was not my intention for you to mate a demon and thus continue to face the dangers of the demon world. I hoped you would marry a human, and if you were to do that, then I wished you to adhere to the rules of human society. I was concerned when I saw you with Kohaku, because I did not want you to contravene the social rules held by humans who consider themselves respectable. If you yield your body to a man who only cares half-heartedly for you, you have little chance of happiness in human society."

"But you're saying it doesn't matter what I do with Koga even if I don't care much for him?" she asked, bewildered.

"Youkai see things differently. Demons put little price on matters like virginity, because we have always had superior senses and awareness of our youki that allow us to know whether a child – born or unborn – is ours. Human societies evolved concepts like virtue in females only because human males have never been able to detect immediately whether offspring are truly theirs, so they keep their women confined, or control them through social rules, to decrease the likelihood of their raising a child they did not father. Demons have no such problems. If Koga likes you well enough to make advances to you, the choice is yours to accept him or not, provided you are not at that time of month when you might conceive a child you do not want. His senses will tell him if you are fertile. So if you like him enough, you may do as you judge appropriate."

She had turned quite red by now, but managed to say with reasonable clarity: "If the village hears about these arrangements, and things don't work out with Koga, I will never be considered suitable as a wife for a human man again."

"Possibly not by the majority of respectable society. So we are taking a risk with your future. However, if there is one thing I have learnt about humans in the short time I have been dealing with them, it is that they are ruled far more by their hearts than most youkai are. A man who truly loves you will love you regardless of whether he believes he is the first male to have known you in the flesh. A half-hearted man, or one interested only in what you can bring him, would never think that way, so perhaps we are beginning the process of eliminating the unworthy."

It was hard for Rin not to feel like she wanted to dissolve into nothingness right where she was standing as her father spoke to her with such frankness. The mere mention of sex and virginity and fertility in anyone's presence – even among women – was embarrassing enough, but it was infinitely worse when the person addressing her about such matters was one of the only two paternal figures she had ever had, the other being her long-dead biological sire, whom she barely remembered.

But Sesshomaru was a demon, and had a demon's outlook on such things. Facts of life did not faze him one whit. He would probably have spoken equally frankly to anyone else, except that there were very few beings in this entire world whom he held in sufficient regard or affection to bestow more than two kind or neutral words on at any one time. Inuyasha was one of them, and she was another, and she realised that she should be grateful for his openness with her.

Still, she was a human girl, and it was really, truly hard for her to feel any gratitude for being made to wish through the whole of this past half-hour that the ground would open up and swallow her whole!

...

Koga's visit was presented as nothing more than a brief stay of a couple of days, to fulfil his promise of seeing his friends again in the spring. That he had arrived at the same time as Sesshomaru was explained away as nothing more than coincidence.

Separately, Sesshomaru had a word with Kaede and Inuyasha about taking Rin away from the village for some weeks. They guessed at once what was going on, but had the sense not to repeat what they knew to anyone else, or to attempt to discourage him from taking this course.

So a day after Koga left, Sesshomaru took Rin away on Ah-Un, with Jaken, leaving only Kaede, Inuyasha and Kagome any the wiser about what was going on, and casting Kohaku into a mire of guilt, for the only conclusion the young man could arrive at was that Sesshomaru had been furious to see his adopted daughter asleep beside a man she was not married to, and had decided to remove her from the village for a time to keep her away from him.

His guilt, borne in utter silence, lasted as long as the preparations for her departure did; but the moment Ah-Un disappeared over the trees bearing the kappa and the girl, Kohaku felt that guilt replaced by a stunning sense of loss, a visceral feeling of abandonment that hit him hard in the gut, and left him needing to take a deep breath to steady himself.

Rin had never left him before. He was the one who had always run to and fro, leaving the village for weeks at a stretch, doing his job and earning his keep, and she had always been here, waiting, her adorable little face lighting up whenever he returned and she first caught sight of him. He couldn't believe that he would be here until his next job, and she wouldn't – and that perhaps she might still not be here when he came back from whatever and whenever that next job might be.

Koga's presence during the days when he had known she would be leaving made it worse. He saw the way that wolf demon's eyes softened when she was near him, and although Rin herself barely looked at or spoke to Koga, Kohaku knew quite well how determined demons could be when it came to courting potential mates. Once Rin was away from the village, what was to stop Koga from hounding her? Obviously Sesshomaru would prefer a demon mate for his daughter than a human one – and certainly anyone would do better than Kohaku himself in Sesshomaru's eyes, after the way he had rejected Rin and hurt her feelings!

He had no right to object to anyone wooing Rin. He had had more than enough chances to have her as his wife, and he had spurned every one of them. Even after realising that she quite possibly meant more to him than any other girl ever had, he had held back and in cowardly fashion failed to raise the subject.

He truly did not deserve her – it was what he had said all along, but now, it really bit deep, because for the first time ever, he actually _wanted_ to deserve her.

...

Jaken was worried. He had always been driven almost to distraction by Rin's constant chatter over the years, but she was silent now – too silent – and he was concerned about her.

"Rin, don't you want to tell me what you have been reading of late?" the kappa demon asked his former babysitting charge as they flew through the clouds on Ah-Un, behind Sesshomaru.

"Maybe later, Jaken-sama," was all she said, so softly that he could barely hear her above the wind whistling past his ears.

She was thinking of how clouds looked from the ground and the air, and of Kohaku.

A few more attempts at conversation that Jaken initiated failed dismally, and he was obliged after a while to remain silent and watch the world go by below them.

They returned to terra firma after a flight of some three hours, landing in a field that was not far from the caves where Koga's tribe based themselves. Sesshomaru had decided that Rin would remain in the fields with him, Jaken and Ah-Un as she had in the days when she had travelled with them, and that Koga could come out to meet her. He did not want Rin staying in the caves with the wolves, as he concluded, quite accurately, that she would be terrified by the animal wolves in the pack, and overwhelmed by the sheer wolfishness and strange faces of the other wolf demons. It would hardly be an environment conducive to her objective assessment of Koga.

So in the fields they were to stay, and Koga had warned his entire pack away from the area where they were, except for discreet perimeter patrols by a select few of their demon guards against hostile invaders, for it was part of their tribe's territory.

Koga came out with Ginta and Hakkaku to greet them after they had landed and surveyed the area. Sesshomaru and Jaken took it all in their usual stride – one impassively and the other excitedly – while Ah-Un apparently could not be bothered with anything other than drinking from the nearby river and lying down for a snooze.

But Rin found it all mortifyingly awkward to know they were here for the express purpose of letting her decide if she would accept Koga as a mate. It was just too awful for words.

The friendliness of Ginta and Hakkaku helped a little to relieve her shyness, and having heard so much about them from Kagome as an amusing and sweet-natured pair made it easier for her to smile and greet them somewhat normally. But she didn't know where to look when Koga spoke to her, and hardly knew what stock answers she was giving to his polite inquiries under Sesshomaru's watchful eye.

This was truly dreadful. How did other girls stand it when their families match-made them? She was turning into an embarrassment to her father – surely he and Jaken, Inuyasha and Kaede had all made every effort to raise her better than this?

Fortunately, Koga had more sense than to try and hold any kind of prolonged conversation with her right under Sesshomaru's nose, and very soon said to her: "Do let me show you around this part of our territory. Our caves aren't anything to look at, and the mountains they are set in are bare and rocky – but the fields around are quite decent, if I say so myself."

Sesshomaru gave her an almost imperceptible nod, so she in turn nodded to Koga, and he led her off away from the river where the taiyoukai had decided to set up camp. She felt worse and worse the further she got from Sesshomaru, Jaken and Ah-Un, and felt alarmingly close to tears. But the moment Koga was sure that the taiyoukai and kappa were out of earshot, he somehow made it all better at once by saying casually to her as they walked: "You don't have to like me, you know."

"What?" she asked, confused by his statement which came out of nowhere.

"You don't have to like me," he repeated, turning to glance at her with a gentle look in his blue eyes which put her a little more at ease. "And if you don't, you just have to ask your father to take you home. I am of course hoping that you will like me at least a little, but if you don't, I won't throw a tantrum. I'll leave that sort of thing to Inuyasha."

She couldn't help but smile at the image of Inuyasha losing his temper and thumping everything within reach, which he so often did, and couldn't help but relax at the even tones of Koga's calm and friendly voice.

Perhaps this wouldn't be so awful after all.


	10. Revelation

"Shippo!" the trio of little fox demons called from outside the spiritual barrier guarding Kaede's village.

Shippo had smelt them long before they called out to him, and he was already halfway to the village boundaries to meet his friends.

"Yuji! Toshi! Jurou!" he greeted them in turn as he popped out in a flash through the barrier. Like him, they were orphaned kitsune demons, although unlike him, they had older siblings and other relatives to help bring them up. He was something of a curiosity to them, as it was known among his fox friends that he more or less acknowledged an inu hanyou as his (somewhat dysfunctional) father figure, and looked to two human priestesses for a mother's and grandmother's affections respectively.

"Shippo, we've been testing your new tricks and spells over the past week, and they all seem to be working well – although none of them lasts very long!" Jurou chirped. "You're getting really, really good at making these things. Now you just have to get them to stay good beyond a few minutes!"

Shippo, scratching his head, said: "I've been trying and trying to get them to last longer, but I can't seem to get the knack of it yet. At least they seem to work perfectly for those few minutes!"

He was glad to see his friends, for he had been a little lonely for youthful company since Rin had gone on her trip with Sesshomaru. From the time he had arrived at the decision to regard her as an older sister, she had stopped treating him as if his heart was made of glass, and was back to the good old Rin who teased him, told him stories and jokes, and was willing to spend hours playing games with him. But when Sesshomaru had taken her away from the village two days ago, the whole place had seemed emptier, less cheery, and Kohaku was especially mournful, for he and Rin seemed to have been spending a lot more time with each other in recent weeks.

"Maybe you can ease up on the perfection a bit and channel some of that into durability?" Toshi suggested.

"No, I can't!" Shippo objected. "Perfection is the most important part of any spell or trick – what's the use of something that lasts for ages but keeps flickering on and off?"

"You've already passed so many of your exams that I don't see why you keep working so hard," Yuji remarked. This little fox was the bravest of the four, but not the brightest when it came to passing the tests set for young kitsune youkai who wished to make a name for themselves in the fox-demon world in order to stand among the craftiest and cleverest of their kind.

"It's important," Shippo insisted. "There will come a day when we youkai will need to be able to conceal our true forms and youki really, really well, even from one another – and excellent spells and tricks are the best way I can think of to achieve that. Kagome, who's from… er… I mean, who can sometimes see into the future, has warned me that in a few hundred years, the world won't be as easy for youkai like us to move around in. And the four of us are still so young, we're sure to live to see that time if we don't get ourselves killed before that! So I'm going to work on this stuff as hard as I can!"

"Speaking of concealing our youki even from one another, we tested out that spell of yours to hide our presence from other demons just a few days back, and like I said, it worked perfectly, but only for a few minutes."

"Who did you test it on?" Shippo asked. "Each other?"

"No – we decided to try and see if a mature demon would pick up our ki," Toshi said. "So we waited till we sensed a powerful one nearby, then we slapped on your spell and ran near him and he didn't detect us! We hoofed it out of there about a minute before we thought it would wear off, and it's a good thing we did, because he had such a stern look on his face."

"And he was talking to your human friend, you know, the younger girl with the messy hair?"

"You mean Rin?" Shippo asked curiously. "Where was this?"

"Oh, out in the fields about two miles from here. The demon was that fluffy white dog fellow who visits your village once in a while."

"What was he saying to Rin?" Shippo asked.

"Uh, something about how if some fellow called Koga 'makes advances' to her, whatever that means, she was free to accept him if she wanted," Yuji said, in the kind of voice that told everyone he had no idea what he was parroting.

Shippo, who had not spent years around the lecherous Miroku without learning some things he should not have learnt till he was much older, cottoned on at once to what it meant. His eyes, already enormous, grew even bigger. "Sesshomaru's planning to mate Rin to _Koga_?" he gasped.

"Wh- what's the matter, Shippo?" Yuji asked. "Who's Koga, anyway?"

"A wolf demon – and Rin's terrified of wolves!" Shippo practically squawked. "How could he _do_ this? Uh, look – thanks for testing my spells – but I've got to go back to the village – I'll see you in a few days, okay?"

"Oh, all right – we were on our way to Jurou's oldest sister's den, anyway – she's caught a lot of rabbits and has invited us to share them. We came to ask if you wanted to come along."

"Erm, thanks, but no – another time, all right?" Shippo said, turning back to the village and disappearing at a trot. He had to question the adults about this!

...

"Are you doing this to make up in some way for your pack killing me?" Rin asked Koga as they sat beside each other on the sloping bank leading down to the river that wound through the wolf tribe's lands.

She had spent two days in these fields now, and Koga's casual, easy manner had made the time spent with him far less awkward for her than it would otherwise have been. She was talking to him more freely, and trying to get to know him as an individual.

He turned his blue eyes on her and shook his head. "I asked myself that too before I approached Sesshomaru. I won't deny that I _do_ want to make up for what happened, but I'd like to do that in other ways, not ask for you as a mate simply because I feel bad about what my pack did. That would be insulting to you, wouldn't it?"

"It would," Rin said softly.

"I thought about it, and I decided that the creatures under my command may have taken your life once, but last winter, I saved your life once. While I knew that did not compensate for the pain and terror you suffered years before, I decided to consider us even for now, where the mere fact of your existence was concerned. After I did that, I realised that I still wanted to find out if you would be willing to consider me as a mate, and I wanted to know you better for that purpose."

"Why? Why me?" Rin asked. "I'm sorry if that sounds either self-centred or self-doubting, but I must ask, because you hardly know me at all."

"I know when I like what I see," Koga said frankly, gazing at her.

Rin hated her inconvenient habit of blushing easily, which she seemed to have developed in her adolescent years, and she tried very hard to keep that under control now.

"You're very pretty," Koga continued. "My eyes told me that the second I saw you in the forest. You're brave and feisty, if a bit impulsive, which all my senses told me from the moment I realised you were fighting off the bandit, and especially when you jumped into the ravine. You're good-natured and kind, which I could see for myself during those days I spent in the village, and by observing how much my friends love you. And you're smart without being calculating, which anyone can tell after spending a bit of time with you."

He could also have added: _And you felt perfect in my arms as we lay in the den, and I wanted to sink my teeth very, very gently into your neck when you bowed to me._

But of course he said nothing of the sort to her.

"I would make you a terrible mate," she said, shaking her head. "I'm not saying that to sound falsely modest, or to deliberately put you off. I'm saying it because I believe that you would do much better with someone a lot stronger than me. Your tribe needs powerful members who can defend it, not individuals who seem to get into trouble all the time and keep needing to be rescued. There's nothing I can contribute to your pack."

"You think I want you for a mate because I hope you'll protect our pack?" he asked with a smile in his voice. "My warriors and I can protect our pack. I was hoping to be able to protect _you_."

She did blush this time, hard as she tried not to, and fought her self-consciousness so she wouldn't lapse into uncomfortable silence again. "I'm doing my best to learn how to defend myself so I won't be such a burden to my friends. But I can very safely say that I'll never be an accomplished warrior of any sort," she sighed. "I don't want to be a problem for anyone. In a human village, I can still pull my weight and help to defend the place; but in a wolf tribe, I would only get in the way."

"May I take your hand?" he requested.

"Hmm?" she asked, baffled by the question that came out of nowhere.

"Your father threatened to kill me if I touched you without your consent – so, may I take your hand?"

"I don't think he meant _that_ kind of touching…" she began, before she realised she had left herself open to being questioned about _what_ sort of touching her father had meant then. _Why,_ she asked herself as she hid her face behind her hair, _is my life one long series of disasters and humiliations?_

"Ah," said Koga, his eyes twinkling mischievously. "If he didn't mean _this_ sort of touching, then if you don't mind…"

He reached his right hand out to take her left, turning his palm up so her hand could rest on it. He closed his fingers gently over hers, as if he thought he would crush her delicate bones if he squeezed.

"Now, back to your comment about your getting in the way – if you can feel my sincerity through the touch of my hand – I'm not courting you for what I think you can bring to my tribe, although I have no doubt you would be a valuable member, with your thoughtfulness, healing skills and intelligence. We could certainly do with your intelligence – I don't mind confessing that I'm not the brightest creature around, but I'm not _too_ stupid either, and I don't think I would embarrass you excessively as a mate."

"Koga, you're not stupid," she said. "How could you embarrass anyone as a mate when you're strong and honourable, kind and willing to learn from experience? It's just that... I'm sorry... I don't know how to put this other than to say that I feel like a little girl playing a grown up's game here. I thought I was ready for marriage a year ago. Perhaps I was in my own naive way then. But now that I'm a year older, I feel as if all I've learnt in that year has only taught me how much I _don't_ know. I do, however, know very well that you are being too generous. You're offering more than you're going to get in return."

"Isn't it ordinarily the case that the party doing the pursuing offers more than he knows he will get in return?" Koga asked. "And by saying all you've just said, it tells me that you're more grown-up than you think you are."

"If I loved you, I wouldn't care who was offering what," Rin answered honestly. "I would only know that I loved you. But I don't. And you know I don't. You knew it before you went to my father."

"Yes, I know you don't love me. But I was hoping to change that, given enough time and communication."

As he spoke, he tightened his hold on her hand, causing her to turn and look into his blue eyes, which pierced her with an intensity and emotion that she had never seen in Kohaku's eyes, or in anyone else's gaze directed at her. It made her breath catch in her throat, and for the first time in her life, she knew what it felt like to be looked at with a kind of desire that had nothing to do with physical hunger – which she had seen in the eyes of the wolves that tried to eat her; or malicious lust – which she had seen in the eyes of the bandit who had attacked her in the forest.

Koga leaned in a little closer and kissed her on the cheek as he had outside Kaede's hut, but this time, seared by the heat of his eyes, she turned her face slightly towards him rather than away from him after the peck he gave her, so that he was encouraged to place another kiss a tiny bit closer to her lips. And when she whispered the words "I don't love you" to him after that, he simply whispered back "I know", and pressed his lips to hers, tasting the softness and fullness of her mouth, like a fruit just bitten into at the moment when it first ripened.

As she kissed him, she knew it was a kind of madness to be doing so, and yet, that look in his wolf-demon eyes had broken open a tiny, locked box in her psyche which told her now, even as she felt she was melting under the heat of his lips and tongue: _He took you once, long ago, maybe not like this, but take you he did – through the fangs and claws of his pack which tore you open and left you altered forever, so you belong to him in some strange way, by laws of the universe that operate in a place you've never been to._

She shivered as one of his hands gripped the nape of her neck and the other found her waist, but neither she nor he knew whether she trembled from the budding of a desire he hoped to awaken in her, or from the fear of returning to the embrace of the one whose extended power had once claimed her life.

Perhaps they were one and the same.


	11. Possessiveness

Koga could not shed a guilty feeling that had lodged somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. Rin was so young, so indescribably vulnerable, and he felt very much as if he was taking advantage of someone totally defenceless.

Kagome had been around the same age when he had first met _her_ , but he could not fairly use that for comparison. He had been different then – harsh and ruthless, desperate to keep his tribe alive, and lacking the psychological maturity and compassion that had grown in him after experiencing the slaughter of his pack mates by Kagura, the suffering he and his friends had endured as they pursued Naraku, and the appreciation of all that Kikyo had done to try and save them despite her own plans and pain, and at the cost of her life.

Then there was what Kagome had been like – young she may have been, but she was open-tempered, spunky, empowered by having a very short fuse, and imbued with a clever resourcefulness that Koga discovered, some years after Naraku's destruction, hailed from a distant future time. While he had pursued her largely because she was beautiful and kind-hearted, he had to admit that the courtship had begun because of his greed for the jewel shards she could detect, and to a certain extent had continued because he didn't want to back down in front of that puppy Inuyasha. When Kagome had returned and chosen Inuyasha as her mate, Koga had been genuinely happy for them, and relieved that he could back off honourably, for good.

Rin might be as kind and pretty as Kagome, with hair as unfettered, but they were otherwise unalike. Rin's outward talkativeness and cheerfulness (at least when among her own friends) belied a modest, quiet nature that was remarkably sweet-tempered despite the loss, agony and deaths she had suffered in her short lifetime. She was quietly confident in the love and affection of her circle of adopted relatives and close companions, but she had no shield of brash self-assurance to fend off hurt and doubt.

Koga wasn't entirely certain that he wasn't adding to her troubles. What was he, a slightly-worse-for-wear three-hundred-year-old demon doing, kissing an utterly vulnerable fifteen-year-old human girl who was so afraid of his kind that she had jumped into a ravine last winter rather than let him approach her? Dear gods, she was practically an infant by demon standards. And what if she did accept him? What could he offer her? A dusty cave to live in, and the company of wolves.

But he had felt drawn to her from the first moment he laid eyes on her in the forest, and her mouth had tasted ever so sweet yesterday – he had been sorely tempted to go further but she had pulled away after the kiss and clearly wasn't ready for more. Her scent was calling him even now where he had left her in a meadow with Ginta and Hakkaku while he had been back at the caves dealing with pack business.

Sesshomaru was in the next field, apparently meditating, but almost certainly keeping a sharp nose and pair of ears trained on what was going on with his adopted daughter and what he probably considered "that pair of scruffy wolves" in the adjoining meadow. Koga could hear them talking – Ginta was telling his old jokes again about Koga's scraps with Inuyasha and a variety of other demons, most of which stories were fortunately new to Rin, and the girl was laughing at his tales, which was a good sound to hear. Except that it was also such a young sound, and Koga was starting to think that surely he was much too old for her.

Until he came round the hill behind which the meadow was situated, and saw that in his enthusiasm to illustrate a certain scene in his anecdotes – probably one involving Kagome and the puppy – Ginta had picked Rin up in his arms and was swinging her around. She was a little flushed with embarrassment and was giggling, but she was fine, and Ginta meant no harm… but Koga found himself instantly, instinctively bristling.

He growled a low, rumbling, possessive growl that only his friends' demon ears would pick up, and Ginta immediately put Rin back on her feet and stepped respectfully away from her, realising that he should never have touched the woman his tribe leader had made clear he wanted to claim as his own.

And just like that, Koga realised that his demon instincts were already perceiving her as his female, despite his guilt about her tender years. He had not felt this way about Kagome because he had known quite well that he was the one encroaching on the puppy's turf back then, but this was a different set of circumstances. _This_ girl was his.

...

"What do you mean Sesshomaru can't refuse him?" Shippo demanded of Inuyasha as he questioned the half-demon and Kagome about what his friends had overheard in the field.

"Shippo-chan," Kagome said gently. "It's not that Sesshomaru can't refuse, and it's not like Koga is demanding Rin as his mate. It's just that Sesshomaru shouldn't refuse to listen to Koga's request to get to know Rin better, after he saved her life. They're just considering each other as possible mates – it's not a done deal."

"But Yuji said that Sesshomaru said that Rin could accept Koga if he made advances to her – and don't think I don't know what that means – I haven't hung around Miroku all these years without picking up _some_ stuff, you know!" Shippo exclaimed. "Surely Sesshomaru wouldn't let Rin actually have sex with Koga!"

Kagome badly wanted to clamp a hand over the mouth of the little fox kit to stop him from saying such things that were so very incongruous with his age. Yet, she acknowledged that while he was a small child in demon terms, the equivalent of a human five-year-old, he had in fact been on this earth for some seventy years now – a good deal longer than she herself had – and been exposed to much more, even if he had not known until quite recently how to process most of the adult information his eyes, ears and nose had received.

Well, he was certainly processing it now, the miko thought. And processing it pretty well too.

"The demon world is quite different from the human world, Shippo," Inuyasha said impatiently. "You're a full demon – you should know that – or at least you will have to know it once you're old enough. Sesshomaru's simply being practical. If Rin's going to mate that scruffy ookami, she can't be holding human standards the whole way – there's got to be some compromise."

"But she's _terrified_ of wolves!" Shippo protested.

"Shippo, just because Sesshomaru gave his permission for Rin to go as far as she wants, it does not mean that she will actually go that far," Kagome told him. "You should know what Rin is like. And we do hope Koga will help ease her phobia of wolves. It's not good for her psychological health to be so terribly afraid of one type of animal or demon. She shivers every time wolves are mentioned, and I can sense the fear paralysing her mind and spirit. Some time spent with his wolf friends could help her a great deal."

"I don't like it," Shippo muttered. "It's just all wrong, somehow."

"You think that only because you've had a soft spot for Rin for ages," Inuyasha muttered.

"I did, but we had a talk about that," the little kitsune said soberly. "I know I won't grow up in time for her, so we decided that she would be a big sister to me – but I'd hoped she would marry Kohaku! I used to be jealous of his closeness to Rin, but I'm not any more, and I think _he's_ right for her! _That_ doesn't feel wrong!"

"Kohaku's had his chance, and he didn't take it," Kagome sighed. "Rin can't wait around for him forever. Humans don't live that long."

"Well I know a human someone who could have had her chances with others, but decided to wait around for what could have ended up being forever to come back to a certain other someone," Inuyasha said to his mate and wife. "Fortunately it only took three years."

"That certain other someone was worth the wait," Kagome smiled back at him. "And that certain other someone has someone _else_ willing to wait around forever for him, who'll come right back to his side once I die. Fortunately that someone else promises to have a very long demon life, so I hope he doesn't mind waiting."

"Stop that," Inuyasha said. "You're not going to die any time soon. I won't allow it."

"We don't control these things, Inuyasha."

Shippo listened with a mixture of sadness for the brevity of the lives of his human friends, and nausea provoked by the couple's sappy exchange. Torn between blinking away tears and sticking a finger down his throat, he decided that it was best to just walk away and sulk alone about Rin's possible future with a badly attired ookami youkai who lived in a miserable collection of grubby caves.

But on his way back to Kaede's hut, he met Kohaku. The sight of the demon-slayer set him off again, and he stopped long enough to mutter to the young man: "You should have married Rin when you had the chance – now Sesshomaru's going to mate her to Koga, and we'll hardly ever see her once that happens! It's not like he's going to move his whole tribe to the village, you know!"

He stomped off on his tiny feet after that, leaving Kohaku stunned.

...

Kohaku had pondered Shippo's words for a full day and night. He realised that he had not the slightest right to interfere in any plans for Rin's future, but he knew he had to at least try to express to her how his feelings for her had… no, not exactly _changed_ , but rather, risen into his conscious heart and mind after being buried for so long.

If he didn't even try, he would lose her without a fight, and that would be hard to forgive himself for. If he tried and failed, then at least he would know she had chosen what she considered a better option than himself. But if she felt that she didn't even have an option, that wouldn't be fair to her.

What could he do, though? What should he do?

After much thought which led him nowhere, the image of Rin poring over her poems and calligraphy came to him, and on a sudden impulse, he asked Miroku for some writing paper, a brush and some ink.

It would be the most pathetic thing ever, but he would do what he could.

...

Having been under Sesshomaru's protection for almost half her life now, Rin knew exactly what the definition of "imposing" was. The taiyoukai was the embodiment of that term, with his height, deep voice, cold countenance, eyes that could look right through you if he was about to either ignore or kill you, and his immense power. Beside him, no one else looked or felt half as impressive. Even when that face and those eyes softened as he spoke to the ones he cared for, like Inuyasha and herself, he could still be very intimidating.

So it said something for Koga's state of mind that the word "imposing" sprang into Rin's thoughts when he came to the meadow where she was listening to Ginta and Hakkaku's stories about their old battles and adventures. He positively radiated authority and power, and she could feel his youki flare just before Ginta hastily set her down. He wasn't really angry, of course, but he was clearly staking a claim to a female, and Rin was the female in question.

Kagome had told her that in her time, it was wrong for anyone to consider someone else as belonging to them, and that slavery was outlawed in almost all parts of the world. Between married couples and among families in that future era, it was increasingly becoming unacceptable in many societies for wives to be regarded as "belonging" to their husbands, and it was even frowned upon for young children to be considered the possessions of their parents.

Rin did not quite understand that, for in her world, it was widely accepted among humans that the male head of a household owned his wife, concubines and children, except when the wife was the daughter of a far more powerful man than her husband, in which case the father often exerted his authority, and the husband might end up living in his in-laws' home. But even that boiled down to the head of a household having power over his offspring's fate, and ultimately, it was the strongest and most influential males who had the final say in what happened to their wives, sisters and children, and their own mothers, once the latter were widowed.

In the demon world, although relations between the sexes were more egalitarian because female youkai could be as strong as or even stronger than the males, courtship was also much more instinctive and akin to animal mating, and fertile females were perceived as a valuable commodity. In the past, few demons had considered humans viable mates, as not many humans were spiritually powerful enough to bear young that would be strong successors to their demon parents. But clearly, half-demon individuals like Inuyasha, Jinenji and that girl Shiori that Rin's friends had told her about could be very strong and capable indeed, and with humans far outnumbering every other intelligent being on earth, perceptions were changing among demons about what made an acceptable mate.

Koga was one step ahead of those that were still being convinced about that, as he had previously wooed one human female, albeit without success, and was now considering another.

 _Considering her very closely indeed,_ Rin thought, as Koga leaned towards her once Ginta and Hakkaku had taken their leave and left them alone. His youki enveloped her, and she became very aware of his physical proximity. Even if he had been a human male, he would have been a strong one, with his muscular physique and limbs built for speed and strength. Adding his demon powers to the package made him an intimidating proposition for an opponent – or the object of his interest. Inuyasha might laugh at him and dismissively call him "wolf boy", but he was no boy, and Rin was no mighty hanyou who could afford to brush him off as insignificant.

"He shouldn't have touched you," Koga said, moving his face so close to her shoulder that she could tell he was sniffing her neck.

"He meant no harm," Rin replied evenly, instinctively knowing that she should soothe his animal nature, which was dominant at the moment.

"I know, but still, it was unwise of him. If I had been any other demon, one who knew and trusted him less, there would have been a nasty fight."

"But you know and trust your pack brothers well, so there will be no nasty fight," Rin said, rather more emphatically than she wanted to.

That seemed to bring his reasonable mind back into play, for he made a light chuckling sound beside her left ear, and seemed to relax as he agreed with her, saying: "No, there will be no fighting. Ginta's a very decent pack brother, and I would trust him with my life. I just didn't like seeing you in another male's arms."

She felt his breath against her ear now, and then his lips nibbling the lobe gently, and somewhere in the back of her mind came the thought: _I wonder if I still taste like food to him..._

The thought frightened her a little, and she began to shrink from his tongue which was tracing the curves of her ear, but he didn't let her pull away this time, wrapping his arms around her and seeking her mouth with his own. She wasn't sure that she really wanted to kiss him at this moment, not when the idea of herself as wolf food was fresh in her mind, but she had let him kiss her yesterday, and her fifteen-year-old personality lacked the confidence to assure herself that it was all right not to do something with someone even if she had done it before. That nascent idea flew out of her head as the sense of his masculinity at such close quarters began to overwhelm her, and she yielded to the kiss, finally gasping and trying to push him away only when he moved down to her neck, and she felt his fangs against her throat.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, but please stop," she whispered shakily.

He drew back at once, though she could see that he didn't want to, and he kept his hands on her upper arms as he said gently: "Don't be afraid of me, Rin. I won't hurt you."

"Please don't be angry with me – I'm not trying to play games or be difficult. I just... I just thought..."

"What did you think?"

She decided to be honest, looking directly into his eyes as she confessed: "I thought of you thinking of me as food."

He stared at her in silence for a moment, then he laughed out loud.

She frowned at that, and remarked: "It's not funny."

"I'm sorry," he apologised, doing his best to stop chuckling. "I know it shouldn't be funny, considering your experiences and my responsibility for what happened, but somehow it _is_ amusing."

Rin glared at him, and he simply gazed back at her until at last he drew a tiny smile from her.

In a softer voice, he said to her: "I am sorry that so very much of what I want to do to you will involve getting my lips and tongue and mouth all over you – but I swear that I have no intention of eating you, nor will I permit anyone else to."

It seemed she would never be able to bring her habit of blushing under control, for she could feel her cheeks burning again at his words, and she tried to hide her face and her embarrassment by mumbling: "First it was your wolves, then that hound from the underworld swallowed me too – I don't know what it is about me and creatures trying to eat me."

"What it is about you is that you're absoutely delectable," Koga murmured, nibbling her ear again. "You're not quite as bite-sized as you were back then, but you're still very, very tasty."

She could help it no more, and giggled. Again, such a very alluring but undeniably young sound.

It gave Koga pause. He moved away from her ear and gave her a peck on the lips before drawing back, thinking once again that she was a mere child in his power, and he was far too old for her. Just then, like a sign, the cream-coloured figure of Kirara appeared in the air over the next field, and Koga said to Rin: "That's the fire-neko from your village. She probably bears a message for you. You'd better go back to your father now. I'll see you later."

She nodded and kissed him on the cheek once, then turned and moved quickly across the meadow at a trot, leaving him to go about his day's work and check on how many deer and rabbits the pack had brought back as kill.

She reached the spot in the next field where Sesshomaru, Jaken and Ah-Un were, and saw that Kirara had come alone, carrying in her mouth a tiny cloth bundle on which was pinned a scrap of paper with her name on it. Sesshomaru took the item from Kirara, glanced at it, and handed it to Rin.

"Thank you, Kirara," Rin said, stroking the cat and receiving a purr and a quick nuzzling in return.

Jaken gave the feline demon a fish he had caught earlier to thank her for making the journey out here, then she was off, flying over the treetops and hills and vanishing from sight.

Rin sat down on the grass and untied the cloth, to find a sheet of writing paper inside, folded neatly and carefully bound with a long tendril, with wild flowers tucked between the tendril and the paper. Curious now, she slipped the paper out carefully without damaging the flowers, and unfolded the sheet.

"What is it, Rin?" Jaken asked.

"It's Kohaku's writing," she replied, in a voice that bore a hint of wonder. "It's a... a poem."

"Oh?" Jaken said, and might have said more, had a subtle glare from Sesshomaru not made him sidle away quietly so that Rin could read in peace, and in private.

Kohaku, who knew nothing of poetry, and had no love for reading or writing, had paintakingly crafted a few lines, which Rin's disbelieving eyes now scanned.

  
_Will the clouds that flew from here ever return, and will I know them if they do?  
They have left me rooted to the earth, bereft of what I thought I would never lose._   


The writing was unsophisticated, and the poetry poor, not unexpected from one completely untrained in such things. But the words were sincere and the lines original – he had certainly not copied them from anywhere – and Rin could see the effort that had gone into them. Her eyes began to fill with tears as she thought about how much she would have given to have had such lines from him only a year ago, and how much things had changed since then.

Or had they really changed? Was she not still moved by what he had written? Indeed, she was, but she honestly didn't know if she was crying because her heart believed he was too late, or because it believed he was just in time.


	12. Response

  
_The clouds turn to rain, tears disperse the blinding mist  
Lost to the earth, the waters flow to the waves and seas_   


As Rin waited for the ink to dry, the two lines in her own handwriting stared back up at her from the fine paper Jaken had given her to use, but she had no idea if she ought ever to let Kohaku read them.

Earlier, Jaken had waited as patiently as his naturally impatient self could while she read Kohaku's note through eyes bright with tears, and sat thinking about it for what seemed like the entire afternoon. When the little green demon could no longer contain himself, he had finally sidled back up to her and asked: "Well? Do you wish to reply? Ah-Un and I can easily make the flight, if Sesshomaru-sama permits."

"I don't know if I will reply," she had said in a subdued voice, gazing at her lap, on which Kohaku's note, now folded up again, rested.

"You can always write something first and decide later if you want it sent," Jaken had told her, before going quickly to Ah-Un's saddlebags, which were resting against a tree while the dragon wandered about munching on vegetation. From one of the pockets, he extracted paper, brushes, a stick of ink and an inkstone, and set them down before Rin, along with a thickly folded piece of fabric so she would have a relatively flat and stable surface to write on. With a bit of water, he wet the end of the ink stick and helped her grind a small quantity onto the stone.

The kappa then strolled off to the river, taking his cue from Sesshomaru, who was standing nearby but looking the other way. Rin stared at the blank sheets before her for some time before selecting a brush and dipping it into the layer of ink on the stone. She held the brush poised over the paper for a few seconds, then dashed off the words that had come into her head without stopping to think if she truly meant them, or meant them for good.

Once the writing was dry, she folded up the paper and gazed at it for some time before handing it to Jaken at last. "Jaken-sama, please will you hold on to this for me?" was her request. "I don't know what I want to do with it yet." She retained the note from Kohaku, slipping it into a fold of her obi.

Jaken, taking her letter, suggested: "I'll put it into the saddlebag, where it will stay dry even if it rains – and it does look like it will rain this evening."

Sesshomaru had already sniffed the air hours ago and concluded that a storm was on its way. Bad weather did not trouble most demons – they sat it out under trees or in any unoccupied caves that were available, and shook the water off their fur and skin once the rain passed – but he was concerned about Rin, who had lived in human shelters for close to seven years now, and was no longer the little girl who had gamely endured all sorts of outdoor conditions when she had travelled with him.

So he was more than satisfied when he sensed Koga's rapid approach. The wolf demon greeted them and invited them all back to his caves, including Ah-Un, saying that at least one of their caves would be large enough for the dragon to fit into quite comfortably if the beast wished to remain dry.

"Thank you, but Rin is the one who really needs shelter from the coming storm," Sesshomaru told Koga. "I would be pleased if you would take her to your caves. If it is not imposing too much on your hospitality, perhaps she can remain there for the rest of this day, and through the night."

"Sesshomaru-sama, I'll be quite fine out here," Rin said. "I used to stay outdoors in all kinds of weather, didn't I?"

"It has been some years since you had to live outdoors," Sesshomaru said. "I do not want you falling ill, so I would prefer it if you went with Koga."

His firm tone of voice left her with little real choice but to obey, so she let Koga lift her onto his back and run off towards the network of caves three fields away, to try and beat the storm. Sesshomaru watched them go, and when they had disappeared into the next field, the taiyoukai spoke to Jaken: "Show me what Rin wrote."

The kappa looked surprised, but he did not question his master, hurrying to the saddlebag to fetch for Sesshomaru the sheet of paper. Sesshomaru took it from him, unfolded it and read the lines, then refolded it and handed it back to Jaken.

"Deliver it to Kohaku," he ordered. "You may fly Ah-Un to the village."

"B-but Sesshomaru-sama," the kappa said in a quavery voice. "Rin wasn't sure whether she wanted to send it to him…"

"Do it," Sesshomaru growled.

The taiyoukai almost never repeated his orders to Jaken, but would either kick him or shoot him a terrifyingly murderous glare whenever the little demon so much as echoed his commands as if he had not understood them. So when he heard the order reiterated with no physical follow-up, Jaken knew he was getting off lightly. Before his big mouth got him into deeper trouble, he shut up and scuttled off at a frantic pace to get Ah-Un muzzled, saddled and ready.

Once the dragon's tack was in place, Jaken hopped onto his back and hurried his enormous mount into the air ahead of the approaching storm, casting only one doubtful backward glance at the pale figure of his lord and master, whose instructions he wondered if it was right to carry out.

...

The rain poured down as Koga leaped into the caves, with Rin on his back. He set her on her feet, and she froze momentarily at the sight of four-legged wolves everywhere, although none made a move towards her. Koga put an arm around her and quickly ushered her through the network of spaces within the rocky mountain into an empty den.

It was his private den, Rin realised, once she saw the deer skins near the far wall, knowing that only the tribe leader or his most important companions would be likely to enjoy such luxuries in a harsh place like this, or have such a roomy space all to himself.

"I'm afraid this is nothing like what you're used to in the village," he apologised, looking around the rather bare cave and seeing it through her eyes. "We don't exactly live comfortable lives out here."

"Please don't apologise," she quickly responded. "I am honoured and grateful that you would give me shelter in the dwelling place of your tribe. And our village is so humble that I could not imagine how you could think of it as being better than this."

"You're very polite, but I know this is only a rough cave, with none of the comforts that humans are so good at making for themselves," Koga said, smiling ruefully. "We demons rest easily on just about any surface, but it can't be pleasant for a human."

"I spent a year roaming the country and sleeping in whatever forest or under whichever tree Sesshomaru-sama chose to stop at, when I was a child," Rin said. "I'm used to it. Maybe Sesshomaru-sama thinks I've grown soft after living in the village for more than six years, but I don't think I have."

"You know," he said. "This was one of the things that made me hesitate before asking your father if I could get to know you better with a view to making you my mate. I had nothing grand to offer you – no castles or palaces, not even a hut, for that matter. I didn't like the picture of you having to put up with me in one of these caves, but I liked you, and I was selfish enough to give it a try."

"Koga," she murmured, moved by his honesty. "If I love someone, I won't care what he has or where we live. The issue is that I hardly know you, and I do not know if I will grow to love you."

"I know that," he said gently, coming right up to her and encircling her arms with his fingers, just above her elbows. "That's why I wish I had more to show – to have a bit more in my favour when it comes time for you to make up your mind."

"You think I would be swayed by a pretty roof over my head?" she asked archly.

"Hmm, I don't know what an unusual and beautiful girl like you might be swayed by," he mused playfully, slipping his arms round her waist. "Other females have been influenced by a lot less than the prospect of a pretty roof over their heads, but as you seem not to mind having _no_ roof over your head, I'm rather at a loss… unless… I might somehow persuade you to find me devastatingly attractive…?"

As he said that, he kissed her neck and was pleased to feel the vibrations of a tiny, wordless utterance deep in her throat, without further mention of the disturbing idea of herself as food. He kissed her mouth then, meeting her timid tongue with his bold explorations, and literally sweeping her off her feet to lay her down on the deer skins. There was a hypnotic rhythm in the depth of his kisses that lulled her while making her heart race. Her hands glided up his arms and her fingers worked into the fur on his shoulders as his lips moved to her left earlobe, then along her delicate jawline and chin, and down her neck till he was scorching her throat again with kisses along the neckline of her kimono.

He tore off his own armour before loosening her sash and parting the layers of fabric with his fingers until he was able to cup her firm, small but perfect right breast in his left hand. Her naturally modest nature led her to instinctively try to tug the fabric back over her exposed skin, but he took her wrists and held her hands down – not harshly or crudely, but in his male animal-demon way which sought to dominate a female he wished to mate until she became willing.

His mouth closed over the rosy-hued nipple and teased it with his tongue until her modesty and apprehension gave way to her body's first real sensations of sexual arousal. The softest of moans escaped her as she arched her back and submitted to the suckling, tongue-flicking, heated attentiveness of Koga's mouth, drawing on her flesh as if it could give him sustenance.

When he felt her yielding to him, he released her wrists and slipped an arm around her to hold her upper back off the ground and draw her closer to him, while at the same time baring her shoulders and her left breast, to which he now turned his attention. The gentle tracings of his claws and fingertips over the sensitive skin of her chest, arms and shoulders sent tingling, sweetly aching shivers right through her belly and stirred that secret place between her legs – the hidden spot that her modest young self had never so much as fingered or explored except to clean herself when she bathed. Koga must have picked up the scent of her arousal, for one of his hands soon made its way under the skirt of her kimono and up her legs, until she panicked and struggled, and he had to leave off for a moment to pin her down with his body.

Looking into her flushed face, he whispered to her: "Don't be afraid – I won't rape you. I wouldn't take you unless you were ready. I'm not that kind of demon. But with your permission, I will touch you. May I touch you?"

 _What a question to ask,_ she thought. Saying no would be a lie, because she was curious about what he could do, and breathless from the waves of arousal he had elicited from her body; but saying yes would also be a lie, because she was unsure of her heart and afraid of all that could happen if she submitted further to him.

"Koga, I… I don't know what I want…" she whispered back.

"Then it's about time you had a chance to decide," he said softly, as he undid her sash completely and opened her kimono. She trembled when he undid the waist ties of her trouser-like undergarment and slid it down her legs and past her feet. "There's nothing here I haven't seen before," he continued. "Although I did my best not to stare when we were in the bear's den, as you were unconscious and hadn't given me permission, I couldn't help but see how beautiful you were."

If she hadn't already been so flushed, she would doubtless have blushed further to be reminded of the time he had held her naked in his arms, but it also reminded her that he had not molested her then, and it told her that even if his hot-blooded male demon ways were much, much more forward than those of a decent, honourable human man's would be, he was being proper in his own manner. She was in demon territory now, and she would have to make some compromises.

As he ran his hands slowly down her waist and up her thighs, and she felt herself grow wet between her legs, she started to breathe so fast that she feared she would end up panting, so she held her breath as his fingers touched the almost painfully delicate lips that shielded the core of her physical being. To keep his claws from nicking the unbelievably soft skin there, he arched his fingers backward and caressed her tenderly with the pad and flat of his index and middle digits, until he had spread the clear wetness from her centre over the rosy lips and that tiny, raised, gently rounded point beneath where those nether lips met.

She exhaled then, trembling and stifling her cries as he kissed her way down her body till his tongue darted out to taste and stroke her, drawing its hot, moist, lightly rough yet smooth-muscled texture over her clitoris and then thrusting it inside her before returning to that point of pleasure again, sending waves of sensation through her that she had never felt before, keeping up the rhythm until she felt those waves crashing against the shore of her soul at ever-closer intervals, and finally washing over her entire being in a climax that seemed to lift her up to the skies before sending her down in the sweetest imaginable way into the embracing warmth of the sea on the hottest summer day.

...

Kohaku greeted Jaken at the edge of the village in the evening, after being alerted by Kirara's mews that someone they knew was approaching. In the twilight, he saw Ah-Un's great shape landing in the forest behind the village, and soon after, the little kappa emerged from among the trees and handed over a folded note. Kohaku thought Jaken seemed hesitant, and curiously quiet for someone who was normally so garrulous, but it seemed impolite to question him about his behaviour. The sky in the direction from which he had flown was dark with rain, and only Ah-Un's swiftness had helped them get here ahead of the storm.

"Jaken-sama, would you like to rest in one of our huts for a while? The rain is approaching – you'll get wet if you fly back now."

That offer finally got Jaken's tongue working. "Silly boy," he snapped. "I am a water sprite, and as for Ah-Un, all dragons in our part of the world have an affinity for water, do they not? So we do very well in the rain!"

"I just thought you might be more comfortable with some shelter."

"Thank you, but I must return to Sesshomaru-sama at once." With that, and with another of those odd, hesitant glances at Kohaku and the note he had given him, Jaken turned and headed back into the forest. He rose up into the air on the dragon and they flew back the way they had come, but this time into the rain.

Kohaku tucked Rin's note into his sash to keep it dry as he sprinted back to his hut, trying to dodge the raindrops that were just starting to fall over their village. Fortunately for him, his sister, Miroku and the children were visiting Kagome and Inuyasha that evening – he was supposed to join them there for dinner later – but for now, he and Kirara had the place to themselves.

He unfolded the note to reveal Rin's elegant handwriting – and the clear refusal in the words she had used. He could not really say that he was surprised to be rejected, but it still hit him in the gut, like a physical blow.

She had responded to his poem using the same imagery he had employed, so even if Jaken had not delivered it, he would have known it anywhere and from any messenger as a specific reply to his missive. In his note to her, he had used the image of clouds blowing away from him to represent her departure, and to allude to the times they had spent out in the fields watching clouds go by, as well as to remind her of how they had often flown together on Kirara, whose name contained the character for "cloud". His using the earth to symbolise his own situation was meant to express not only that she had flown away while he remained bound to the village, but also to refer to his own name, which meant "Amber", a substance that emerged from trees, which were rooted to the ground.

But she had refused him. Her lines told him that she, the cloud, had dissolved into rain from all her tears for him, tears which had finally revealed how blind she had been to have loved him before. And more to the point, the rain she had turned into would fall not on the earth where he was, but into the sea instead. And she had hinted at the one she had chosen over him in her peculiar choice of the character for "waves" – it was not the character that people in their land normally used to symbolise ocean waves, but was instead the one more commonly used by people on the mainland in the west. While the left half of the character was the component related to water, it was the right half that was telling, for it was the same as the right half of the character for "wolf". No doubt the two words were different and meant entirely different things, but knowing the writer, and knowing the demon who was courting her, he knew that the character was intended to create a visual allusion that his own eyes would pick up at once.

So she had chosen Koga, and there was no hope for him. He closed up the paper again, carefully, along its original folds, and slipped it back into his sash, feeling that a vital part of his life had been torn from him.

He deserved this outcome, truly he did, to have been so obtuse for so long, and to have refused her when she had declared her feelings for him. He had deliberately treated her like a child, and now that he realised he wanted her, she had grown beyond his reach.

She was probably angry with him for bothering her now with his belated sentiments after she had forgotten him and moved on. And his rival – how could he compete with him? A powerful demon who led his own tribe and who had never been lacking in self-belief in anything that he set out to do – it was hopeless.

The rain had come down, and it would no longer seek the embrace of the trees and the earth that were thirsting for it.


	13. Choice

Kohaku felt as if he was embarking on a suicide mission. As an experienced taijiya, he knew perfectly well how aggressive demons could get if they perceived that their mates – or intended mates – were being threatened or about to be seized by someone else. But he had been a fool for so long that he couldn't now accept Rin's note as the final word. He had to speak with her and do his best to express to her what he felt. If she still refused him in person, then he would have few other options beyond retiring graciously.

As Kirara soared over the forests and fields towards the home base of Koga's tribe, the day after Jaken had delivered Rin's note to the village, Kohaku asked himself exactly what it was he would say to her, and realised that he had thought up a hundred different speeches but had not settled on one, and that despite all the feelings and thoughts churning in his heart and head, he hardly knew how to express them. Those two lines of poetry had been about all he had managed to summon, and the well of expression appeared to have run dry – he really was not one for words.

The field in which Sesshomaru's pack was camped came into view, and Kohaku could see Ah-Un's great shape from that distance, raising his two heads as he sensed the fire cat's arrival. A little closer, and Sesshomaru's tall white figure with its mass of fur over one shoulder became obvious, with the tinier green-and-brown dot that was Jaken scampering to and fro in what seemed to be either anxiety or excitement.

There was no sign of Rin in the field.

Kirara landed in front of Ah-Un, and Kohaku dismounted, then approached Sesshomaru and bowed to him.

The dog demon gazed at him from his imposing height, and greeted him with a question: "Why are you here?"

"Sesshomaru-sama, please may I speak with Rin?" Kohaku requested.

"What do you have to say to my daughter?"

"To be perfectly honest with you, Sesshomaru-sama, I hardly know what I wish to say. Forgive me if that sounds vague and indecisive, but I am struggling to put my thoughts and feelings into words. I am sure, however, that when I see her face, I will find some way of saying what I don't at present know how to say."

"You came despite her note of refusal?"

"Yes, Sesshomaru-sama. I had to try again."

"Taijiya, you yourself told me in the winter that you were unworthy of her. Why should I permit you to trouble her now?"

"Sesshomaru-sama, I _am_ unworthy of her," Kohaku said frankly. "But I have also realised something I did not know before. What I have realised is that I love her. It is as simple as that, and also as hard to understand."

"What if you do love her? It is no more and no less than what any other suitor might profess."

"That is true," Kohaku agreed. "Indeed, I have very little else to offer her apart from my love. But there is one thing I hope I have that no other suitor does."

The taiyoukai continued to look at him with an unreadable expression, so Kohaku took it as permission to continue speaking.

"It is that Rin once loved me, and if she has not as yet given her love fully to anyone else, then I believe she loves me still, or could love me again."

"Why would she love you still when you refused her, while others declared their love for her boldly and without reservation?" Sesshomaru questioned.

"Sesshomaru-sama, I never deserved Rin's love to begin with, but she gave it to me – that is a mystery I could never understand. I failed to respond to her love, and yet she loved me still – a deeper mystery I cannot understand. I only know that she has as loyal a heart as any that has ever beaten, and if she gives herself to someone her heart does not yearn for, it will hurt her in the end. Now that I have realised what a fool I was, and how much she means to me – how much she has always meant to me – I hope to earn that love she always had for me by giving her far more in return."

Sesshomaru looked hard at him for long moments, before saying at last: "Rin spent the night in the caves with Koga. Knowing that, do you still wish to claim her? If you still want her, you will have to get past the ookami youkai. The decision is yours, and its consequences are yours to bear."

...

They had spent the night alternately sleeping and talking. Rin had wrapped her white inner robe loosely about her – Koga would have preferred to see all of her, but she was still shy about exposing her body even after giving him such intimate access earlier, and he did not want to make her uncomfortable.

She asked him about all the fur on his body, and his tail, and he explained that like Sesshomaru's mokomoko, he could detach it when he was in human form – but it was really very much a part of him, and not like clothing or accessories that could be casually removed and left about.

Did he transform into a wolf, then, sometimes? she asked. And his answer was yes, sometimes, but not often, because in animal form he lost a great deal of his sense of reasoning and rationality, which could be dangerous and inconvenient at the wrong moments. Had he been in wolf form when he had seen Ginta lift her into his arms, for example, he might have flown at his pack-mate's throat.

Her eyes widened, and they talked of other things until her earlier question about his ability to transform prompted him to summon one of the smaller, gentler animal-wolves to the den. He made the wolf lie down, then he encouraged Rin to stroke its coat, to see if that could help undo more of the harm his pack had inflicted on her years ago. She was so afraid – he could hear her heart pounding hard and racing at an incredible pace – but she stretched out a hand from where she was hiding behind him, and carefully touched the wolf on his rump once before pulling her hand back as if she had put it into the fire.

"Have no fear," Koga said gently, reaching round to wrap an arm about her and draw her forward. "Go on, this fellow won't do you any harm – he's old and practically toothless – we demons practically have to mince his food for him!"

Rin laughed and reached her hand out again, a little more bravely this time. She stroked the wolf gently along his spine and his flanks, down to his thickly-furred rump, but avoided touching his tail as she had gathered through years of observation that most animals did not like having their tails handled by others. She inhaled his wild scent, rich with its stories of countless forests, long-ago hunts in the rain, the earth of cave floors and the taste of prey, and she found herself able to accept it all as a whole that could not be divided up – this was a hunter, and it hunted prey, and she had once been prey, but if she had any say in the matter, she would never be that again.

"Naturally, I would strongly recommend against approaching any other wild animal and trying to pat it, ever again," Koga told her humorously, making her smile. "That might have a very bad end-result."

"I'm not _that_ stupid, you know," she replied.

Later, he had stood guard outside when she needed to relieve herself. Their pack had no female demons, for they had either lost them to the harpies, or to the females' refusal to continue camping out on what they perceived as the outpost of wolf-demon territory – they could not accept that their tribe leader needed to do the job of guarding the most dangerous area with his own pack instead of assigning a less important pack to fill the role. So he had stood between her and possible intruders, and smiled at her insistence that he move as far away as was reasonably possible, for she was also shy about having anyone around when she had to deal with her bodily functions.

Very late in the night, quite close to morning, she had finally dropped off into a deep sleep, wrapped in one of the deer skins. Koga, who did not need much sleep beyond a brief nap here and there, rose from her side quietly at dawn, so as not to disturb her. As he moved off the pile of skins, his feet unintentionally kicked against the outer robe and other garments she had folded and stacked up, knocking her obi to the ground. A piece of paper fell out of it.

Without thinking about what he was doing, he opened it and read the lines, and guessed at once that they had been penned by Kohaku. He then found himself wondering if Rin had given a reply, and what she had said if she did. He replaced the toppled clothing and slipped the note back into the sash, then left the den to attend to some tribe matters after asking Ginta and Hakkaku to stand guard outside the den and ensure that no one entered to startle or bother the sleeping girl.

He worked till the morning sun was high in the sky, and until he sensed the presence of the fire cat from Inuyasha's village – as well as that of her rider, the taijiya whose handwriting he had glanced at just a few hours ago.

Some of the demons in his pack were familiar with the young man and the fire cat, and they did not challenge their approach. Ordinarily, Koga would have welcomed anyone from Inuyasha's village with open arms, but this young man was his rival, and what he might mean to Rin gave him the look of an intruder, in the eyes of the wolf tribe leader.

"Kohaku," the wolf demon stated, in a calmly neutral voice, standing at the main entrance to their network of caves with his arms folded. "What brings you here?"

"I've come to speak with Rin. Please may I see her?"

"What do you wish to see her for?" Koga asked.

"Do you speak for her now?" Kohaku questioned. "Have you become her lord and master, who can decide whom she sees and whom she does not?"

"What if I have?" came the rejoinder.

"I'd like to hear that from Rin herself."

By that time, Rin had heard and sensed the buzz of conversation and activity among the pack in the caves in reaction to the arrival of the visitors, and quickly learnt from Ginta and Hakkaku that Kohaku had come. She hastily threw on her outer robe and knotted her obi as best she could while asking the pair of demons to help her find her way to the main cave entrance.

She appeared by Koga's side just as Kohaku was challenging the wolf tribe leader's authority to be her gatekeeper. The demon slayer's first sight of her in days, with her casually pulled-on garments, suggested to him at once that she had done more with Koga in the night than just sleeping in his den.

"Kohaku?" she said, her voicing of his name as a question expressed everything that ran through her mind at this point in time – why he had come, what he must be thinking, her uncertainty about how she should behave towards him.

"Rin, may I speak with you privately, please?" the young man requested. He was still mounted on Kirara, the fire cat hovering in the air to keep her rider on a level with the cave entrance, which opened onto a narrow ledge and a steep drop. Kirara could not politely land on the ledge, not with Koga and his pack mates standing right there.

"If you have something to say to Rin, you will say it here," Koga told him.

"Koga…" Rin began.

"No, Rin," Koga answered. "This taijiya has never cared for you as more than a sister and friend, but since you came here, he has been sending notes and now he appears in person? He is manipulating your feelings and confused about his own – to want you only when he realises that someone else does."

"You saw his note?" Rin asked Koga.

"It fell out of your obi this morning when I moved your clothing by accident. I didn't know what it was when I picked it up – it was not my intention to pry."

"Rin!" Kohaku called to her again. "Please listen to me. If I must speak here in front of everyone, I will. What I came to say is that for years, I didn't realise that I loved you, because so much of myself was lost in regret for what I did to my own family, and I did not wish to think of starting a family of my own because I did not believe that I deserved one. I even feared that I might harm my own wife and children if ever I married. But in the early spring, after we spent more time together, talking about our lives and our feelings, I realised that I am no longer in danger of hurting the ones I love, and that I do love you – only you – but I lacked the courage to say so after having hurt your feelings so much before. I remain completely unworthy of you, but I love you, and I have realised how much we have always had in common – we understand each other, because we grew up together, and we both died and were brought back to life before, and I know you – I _know_ you, Rin, and I love you!"

"But perhaps I am no longer the girl you knew," Rin said in response. "You may no longer know who I am."

"Whoever you have become, I want to get to know that girl and win her heart all over again," Kohaku declared. "I do not care what you have done – or with whom – or who you have become – part of you will always be the Rin I knew, and whoever else you are now, I also wish to know that person and to love her. I received your note yesterday, refusing me. Perhaps a wiser man would have accepted that and not come to you to press for more, but I am foolish enough to try again. I only wish to know if you will accept me after all that has taken place in our lives."

"M-my note?" Rin echoed in confusion. "But I gave the note to Jaken-sama to hold on to it because I wasn't sure that I actually wanted to send it to you… I don't understand how you received it!"

"Jaken-sama delivered it to me," Kohaku said.

"Why would he do that after I asked him not to?" Rin asked.

She looked down into the forested area at the base of the mountain, and tried to pick out the clearing and fields that Sesshomaru and Jaken were camped in, but could not make out the geography of the place.

"You wrote him a note of refusal, but hesitated to send it?" Koga asked Rin.

"Yes," she admitted. "I wasn't sure."

Koga studied her face carefully, then he said to her: "The time has come for you to be sure. Do you wish to be with me, or with him? You know very well how I feel about you, and he is now declaring how he feels about you – I cannot tell you if he is sincere or not, but I can tell you that I have been perfectly sincere in my intentions from the moment I caught you in my arms as you leaped into the river."

Rin could say nothing as she looked from Koga's piercing blue eyes to Kohaku's melting brown ones.

"If you cannot decide, I will fight the taijiya, and the victor will make the decision on your behalf," Koga told her. "That is the way of the demon world, and the taijiya is now in demon territory."

"No!" Rin cried. "Absolutely not! There is to be no fighting! If I have any say at all in this – if I have any control at all over what happens – no blood is to be shed for me!"

"Then you must decide," Koga said. "You have made me no promises and no commitments, so I have no right to keep you back if you choose to go. I would never bind you in a union you were reluctant to enter."

His kindness almost broke her heart, and she felt the tears scalding her face. But she also knew what she had to do to prevent the possibility of bloodshed, so she told the demon slayer: "Kohaku, give me one more day. Come back here tomorrow, and you and Koga both will have my decision. Please leave now."

"Rin…" Kohaku started to say, but seeing her tear-filled eyes and her unhappy face, he stopped himself from speaking on, and only nodded in agreement before asking Kirara to turn around and go back to the place near the river where Sesshomaru was.

Rin watched him go, then she turned to Koga and said to him: "Koga, let's go back to the den. We must talk about this."


	14. Restitution

She had become remarkably calm. Gone were her blushing and stammering, and words murmured from a face hidden behind her long hair or obscured by bowing her head.

"The fact that I was dismayed that he had read my note confirms for me now that I didn't wish to send him that message," she said to Koga when they were alone again. "Part of me meant it – otherwise I wouldn't have written it – but another part of me believed that it wouldn't be a permanent thing – that I didn't want to refuse him forever."

"Despite your words of refusal, he came. Does that please you?" Koga asked.

"Yes and no. I am pleased to know that someone I loved for years, and whom I thought could love me back, has decided that I am important to him. However, I think he came so urgently only because he believed he would not have another opportunity to state his case. I doubt the depth of his feelings."

"Yet, you are about to reject me."

Her heart almost broke for Koga. He was inexpressibly kind to her even now, when he had every right to be furious. They were seated on the deer skins, and he was holding her hands – he had taken them to encourage her to begin speaking when they had first returned to the den, and he was holding them still, gently and steadily.

"I am," she stated calmly. "But it's not for the reasons you think. I'm not rejecting you for Kohaku, although the way I felt when I realised he had read a note I never sent may have been the catalyst."

"Then why are you saying no to me?" he asked in a whisper, fixing her with his piercing eyes.

"I'm saying no because another thing I have realised is that while I am very fond of you, and grateful beyond words for your patience with me and affection for me, I don't love you."

"I have more than enough love for both of us," he said earnestly. "I don't mind if you're not in love me – I'd happily settle for mutual affection and respect, you know."

"That's the trouble, Koga," she said with all the sincerity in her heart. "You don't deserve to be bound to someone who doesn't love you as much you love her! You deserve to be loved utterly and completely for everything that you are, and I hope and pray with all my being that you will spend many, many of your days with someone who returns all that you pour out to her with all her being. I can't be that person."

"I wouldn't complain, Rin," he responded. "I've seen enough of you to know that I would be happy with your presence and your compassion and affection – which may grow into love eventually, who knows?"

"But we don't know that it will. It's too big a risk to take. You shouldn't be happy with just some affection from your mate. You should be drowning in love – someone as wonderful as you should have no less than that in his life. If I ever knew that you had taken a mate who was won over by all that you could offer her – your power, strength, love and loyalty – and who wanted you only for all that she could receive from you, or hung around only because she was grateful, but could not give you all her love in return, I would feel very sad for you, so how could I do that to you myself?"

A tear rolled silently down her cheek, and Koga sighed. He wrapped his arms around her, and she clung to him, and for long moments they had no more words to speak, but the emotions they each felt churned so powerfully under the surface that they could almost feel them through each other's skin.

"You're not going to change your mind, are you?" he asked her at last.

It hurt her to hear him sound so resigned and sad. "I'm not going to change my mind," she replied. "I care for you too much to use you to receive generous love and protection while having less love than I should – or should I say the wrong kind of love – to give back to you."

"The wrong kind of love?"

"The kind you should get from your friends, but not from your mate."

They drew apart, and he took her hands again. "Is there anything I can do or say to make you change your mind?" he asked.

"You've already done and said more than I could ever deserve to have from you, and I will never forget, as long as I live, all that you have given me. But it's time for me to stop taking and taking from you, because all I have in return is a promise of friendship, and that to the end of my days, you will be in my prayers of thanks to the gods and my prayers of hope that you will have a long life that is filled with joy beyond measure."

"I've done more horrible things in my three hundred years than you will ever know – more than I hope you will ever hear about, certainly, so I am the one who does not deserve your kindness and your prayers," he said sadly.

"No, you mustn't think that, Koga," she insisted. "We have all made mistakes in our lives – perhaps demons have more time to make more mistakes, but they also have more time to do as much or greater good to balance it out. You have a great heart filled with love and compassion, and I have no doubt at all that you will do much good long before your days are over."

"You yourself are so good that you willingly see good in others," he said with a little smile.

"I see what is there," she said firmly.

He gazed at her quietly for some time and took in all her kindness and optimism on his behalf, and accepted it. Then he asked her: "Do you trust me?"

"Completely," she answered, with no hesitation.

"Then there is one more thing I want to do for you, which I hope will go towards whatever good I have done and will do in the future."

"You've done too much for me already."

"But this is necessary," he said. "It may seem to you like a strange way to do good, but I have my reasons."

"What are you talking about?"

"Come with me – I wish to take you somewhere today, but we will return before the night ends."

Not understanding what he planned, but willing to see what he had in mind, she left the caves with him, and he lifted her onto his back. He sprang into the forest and ran at great speed through the woods, which eased into fields, then turned into forests again, and over hills. Even without the Shikon shards in his legs that had given him such impossible strength and pace before, he was still an extremely fast runner, and untiring enough to cover great distances in comparatively little time.

As she had not eaten since last night, he stopped by a river to let her rest and drink, and caught some fish for her to eat. While he built the fire and cooked the fish, she asked him: "So where exactly are we going? You're still not going to tell me, are you?"

"You'll know it when we get there. And I can tell you right here and now that you're _not_ going to like it – but trust me, I have good intentions."

"Now I'm getting worried," she said, but she spoke lightly.

They ate the fish, and she drank her fill of water, and they rested there for some time until Koga looked at the sun high in the sky, and said they should continue.

By midday, they were where he wished to take her, and as he had said, she did not like it. Her eyes widened and her heart thumped as she looked about her, and when she turned to speak to him, her mouth felt dry and her tongue seemed to have gone numb. "Koga…? This is – this is the village…"

"Yes, the village you were living in when I set my wolves upon you. No one lives here now. We wiped out the entire population."

The place was dead. Its huts still stood, but the fields were dry and not a soul was in sight. All those years back, someone had buried the villagers – Rin had no idea if Inuyasha's pack had come back later to do it, or if a neighbouring village had seen to the burial, but the mass grave stood at one end of the deserted settlement, and not a living soul was in sight.

"What are we doing here?" she asked in hushed tones. "Why did you bring me here?"

He turned his clear blue eyes on her and said to her: "I may never be able to change that terrible thing I allowed my pack to do here, and I may never be able to erase that horrifying memory in your mind of being killed by my wolves – but I think I can _replace_ it."

"Re-replace it?" she stammered. "What do you mean?"

"I can create something similar, yet totally different, for you to store in your memories, so that hopefully, the old ones won't haunt you so much any more. I told you you wouldn't like it, but if you trust me, go along with it – please."

"What exactly do you want me to do?" she asked, her heart racing, her palms turning clammy.

Staring directly into her eyes with love and understanding, he said one word to her: "Run."

"K-Koga…" she stammered, backing away from him.

"Trust me – but run. Run from me now. Like you did that first time my pack went after you. Go now. Run!"

Her breath coming fast and short with the fear she could not help but feel despite her affection for him, she stumbled away and tore past the huts just as she had when she first saw the pack unleashed upon the village. As she ran, she turned her head to see where Koga was and saw, to her disbelief, that he was transforming.

He was turning into his wolf form, which she had never seen before – which, as far as she knew, even Inuyasha and Kagome had never seen before.

He was a wolf. And he was coming after her.

She shed the sandals from her feet and ran barefoot into the forest, exactly the way she had gone that day, almost crying with terror from the appalling memories that flooded her mind, perhaps more terrified now because she knew that there was no dog-demon-turned-father-figure lying in the forest in the direction she was tearing in.

Just where the pack had brought her down and torn into her flesh, Koga caught up with her and overtook her in one great bound, cutting off her escape route and standing before her in his great four-legged shape, all brown and black and full of fangs, but with the same piercing blue eyes. Those eyes. She knew those blue eyes. _Trust me,_ she heard in her mind as he padded towards her, his steps full of an unreadable intent.

 _Trust me,_ she heard again.

So she stilled her soul, and despite her terror and fear, she made the decision to trust him.

He pounced on her. She let him bring her down, finding that as she gasped and fell, he somehow twisted around her and cushioned her fall with his furry body. They rolled over once, and then he was on top of her again, straddling her with all his four legs, gazing down his long, powerful muzzle at her.

She lay there quietly under him, looking up at his predatory form in silence, until he lowered his head and licked her face, cleaning away all her tears, and nuzzling her neck and body with his massive jaws and tongue. With a huge exhalation of breath in sheer relief and affection, Rin laughed and cried all at the same time and put her arms around his neck with its pile of fur so thick that she almost couldn't work her fingers through it to his skin. She threw her arms about that great wolf and clung to him, and he lay beside her on the forest floor until he turned back into his human form.

"There," he said to her gently, looking at her out of the face she knew so well. "Wasn't that a better outcome than the first time?"

Still sobbing lightly, but also laughing softly, she whispered back both tearfully and lovingly: "Much better. Couldn't you have done this back then?"

He smiled at her sadly, then chuckled in response to her infectious giggles, and kissed her. "I know you don't love me, and I know you won't be my mate," he murmured between touching his lips to hers. "But if you will allow me a few kisses…"

She did.

"…and if we could complete the memory replacement by letting me get my teeth all over you – but only with some light nibbling…"

She burst into laughter again as his teeth grazed her neck gently, and she held him all the rest of that afternoon, until the nightmares of her past flew away, pursued into the invisible distance by his tenderness.


	15. Perspective

Kohaku had camped in the field overnight with Sesshomaru and Jaken. Sesshomaru sat under a tree by himself, at a distance from him and Jaken, and spoke not a word to him. Jaken kept wanting to say something to the young man, but repeatedly cut himself off and never got beyond the first two syllables of the demon slayer's name.

In the morning, Kohaku was getting ready to head for the caves with Kirara again when he and his companions saw Koga running towards them from a distance, carrying Rin. When the approaching pair arrived in the field, Kohaku stared as the wolf demon let the girl off his back carefully and lovingly, and she slipped her arms around him and said "Thank you – for everything", accompanying her words with a peck on the cheek.

"Rin…?" Kohaku began uncertainly, walking up to her, not knowing how to ask the questions he was bursting to ask. _I thought you told me to go to the caves this morning? Why has Koga brought you here to the field? What does that peck on the cheek mean? What do you mean by 'everything'?_ _Have you decided which one of us you want?_

"Thank you for coming out here to speak with me and declare your feelings for me, Kohaku," Rin said, turning to him with a formal little bow. Then to Sesshomaru, she likewise gave a bow and said in an equally formal manner: "Sesshomaru-sama, I am ready to return to the village now. Thank you for bringing your daughter here out of your concern for her future."

"Rin? Does that mean that… you have decided to be with me?" Kohaku asked, getting it off his chest at last.

Rin glanced at Koga before she answered: "Thanks to Koga-sama's kindness, I have realised that I am simply not ready to marry, until and unless I love the one who loves me, as much as he loves me. I am not at this point in my life prepared to accept an unequal relationship. I may not hail from a future time as Kagome-sama does, a time where such things are taken for granted by many societies, but I can _hope_ for such happiness, and failing that, I may well be content to live my life without ever marrying. There are respectable ways for an unmarried, childless human woman to make a living – not many, but they exist – and I would be pleased to choose that path in life rather than settle for an easy life of unhappiness or dull acceptance. Perhaps I will regret this decision when I am old and wrinkled, but for now, it is the right thing for me to do."

"But I _do_ love you, Rin," Kohaku declared. "I just didn't know it until now."

"Kohaku," Rin sighed, dropping her formal manner and looking into his earnest eyes. "You realised that you didn't want to lose me only when you thought I was about to marry someone else. But that is quite different from love! I have also realised something about myself: while a part of my heart has always and will always lean towards you as my first love, I've discovered that the love it bears is a young and childish one, and that as I grew into a woman, it remained childish. I'm not prepared to declare as you have that I truly 'love' you, now that I have seen and understood what it means for one grown-up individual to love another."

She looked at Koga again here, and her eyes brightened again with tears, but the wolf demon smiled at her and kissed her cheek, and said to her: "Any time you change your mind – even if you're old and wrinkled…", words which made Kohaku feel the heat of jealousy suffuse his soul.

But Koga was turning to Sesshomaru now, and giving him a formal bow, saying: "Sesshomaru-sama, thank you for the honour of allowing me to court your daughter. I have done my best to convince her that she could have a happy life with me, but as she has declared her heart unready for that life with me, I must respect her decision. Should Rin decide otherwise at any time, I would be happy to claim her… although I have no doubt that Sesshomaru-sama is somewhat relieved not to have to be my father-in-law?"

Koga added that last bit cheekily, drawing a glare from the taiyoukai and a near-giggle from Rin, who had to bite her tongue and lips to keep from making a sound.

The wolf-demon then took his leave of them, taking Rin's hands within his and giving them one last affectionate squeeze before turning to go and disappearing into the distance.

"So… so you don't want me either?" Kohaku asked, confused.

"Not at this point in time," she said tenderly, but without wavering. "As I said, a part of me will always be that child who loved you with her childish heart – but if that doesn't grow, I won't be your wife. Thank you for your patience with me, your friendship all these years, and the courage it took you to write to me and then come out to see me even when you received a note that I _never sent_."

This was when Rin turned her enormous brown eyes on Jaken, who seemed to be trying to hide behind his staff of heads, while spluttering: "B-b-but… but…."

"I told Jaken to send your note," Sesshomaru said, finally putting the little kappa out of his misery.

"Sesshomaru-sama?" Rin said in surprise. "Why did you do that?"

"I wished to see what the taijiya would do. Yesterday, I had my answer," the taiyoukai stated.

All three of the other individuals in the field who had the power of speech – Rin, Kohaku and Jaken – stared at the great dog demon, and every one of them wanted to question him about what exactly he meant by that. But even as they were gathering the words that would allow them to do so politely, Sesshomaru turned on his heel and simply stated: "It is time we returned to the village."

He then took to the air without another word, leaving the rest scrambling for Ah-Un and Kirara.

...

Rin settled back into village life almost without missing a beat, and as those who knew where she had gone, and why, said nothing to the rest of the community, everyone else assumed that she had merely been travelling with her adoptive father for a while, just as she had done before moving into Kaede's hut nearly seven years ago.

Things, however, were never the same for Kohaku. For days after their return to the village, he spent quiet hours pondering Rin's words. She had politely and considerately spoken only of her own love and her own feelings as they stood in that field in the wolf demons' territory, but in her words, the expression of her eyes, and the tone of her voice, he had sensed that she was also speaking of his love, and implying that his affections were as childish as hers.

He spent much time asking himself if that was true, if her words and implications were fair, and if they truly did not love each other as she expected them to. Many marriages that Kohaku saw all around him were founded on little more than compatibility of background; a contractual exchange of wealth and protection offered by one party and beauty and fertility offered by the other; an agreement among two sets of parents who believed they were doing their best for their offspring; and the sheer simplicity of a mate-finding philosophy that ran along the lines of: "you were there, you were available, and you didn't say no, so here we are".

These marriages varied in their outcomes and happiness as much as those that Kohaku had been told were founded on true love. From what he could see, it didn't seem to matter _how_ two people came together – whether the beginning was businesslike or passionate, it appeared that after ten or twenty years or so, _any_ marriage could eventually turn out to be a happy one or a miserable one, interesting or dull, good or bad, loving or filled with resentment.

As he had never wanted to marry before, he had looked upon these realities of life around him as yet another good reason why he shouldn't bother to settle down. But now that he had been triggered by nearly losing Rin into realising that he did want her by his side, and that he would not murder his own family as he had feared before that he would, he began to look far more carefully into what marriage was like and what it was about, and decided that commitment, contentment, loyalty and humility went a long way towards making these unions satisfactory – but that an honest beginning and enduring affection could make them really good. Was that not enough for Rin? What more did she want? He was fond of her, he knew her well, he would always cherish her and protect her, and he would certainly never take another woman into his bed or abandon his wife or their children.

What did the girl want?

He didn't know, but he was certain that he had spent more than enough of his life passively going through the motions of work, survival and communication while allowing his memories to be swamped by his painful past. It was time to sustain the momentum that he had launched by taking the initiative to write his sad little poem to Rin, and not fall back into that haze of walking, talking and smiling politely while constantly replaying the circumstances of his death like a bizarre stage act going on endlessly in the background.

His father – and here, for the first time since he had killed him, Kohaku bravely thought of how his father must feel – well, he must surely want his son to live fully and well. He who had been so just and courageous and understanding in life would have known even as he died that his youngest child had not meant to kill him, was not responsible for what he was doing, and had been under someone else's control.

He thought about how he would feel if one of Sango's children accidentally hurt him badly, and he realised that because he loved his precious nieces and nephew, and knew perfectly well what good children they were, he would bear not the tiniest grudge against them no matter how bad the injury was. Then he realised too that he would probably forgive them even if they hurt him deliberately in a fit of anger or foolishness. That led him for the first time to step into his father's shoes, and also for the first time to know without a doubt that his father must have died still loving him.

"Chichi-ue, I'm so sorry," Kohaku whispered to himself, to his father's spirit, to whichever benevolent gods would listen. "Forgive me."

Merely uttering those words lifted a weight from his heart, and gave him the determination to make the most of his life.

Right away, he got up that day and went to the small garden outside Kaede's hut, where Rin was collecting sprigs and leaves from the herbs that had sprouted up and grown well throughout the spring. She looked up and smiled at him, and he knelt across from her over that little patch of garden, and they talked.

They simply talked. About what they had been doing, what was happening in the village, how the rice farmers were doing, what Kirara had been up to, and anything that came to mind.

It wasn't much, Kohaku knew, but it was yet another start. And where there is a new beginning, there is always hope for a better outcome.

...

Through the late spring and summer, he wooed her with conversation, gifts that he made certain no longer included dolls, bad poetry, and outings on Kirara. He gave her sincere smiles and related stories from his demon-slaying jobs that made her laugh or gasp, and made it as plain as day to everyone in the village that this was the young woman he had set his heart on.

And still, she remained merely friendly to him.

Then one warm summer night, after the sun had gone down and the moon had risen, and Kohaku could not sleep because it was so very humid, he slipped out of the hut quietly, to not wake Miroku, Sango and the children, and took a walk with Kirara along the main village lane. His footsteps automatically led him towards Kaede's hut – for he had trod quite a path between Sango's hut and the old miko's for weeks – and from a distance, he saw Rin, Kaede, Shippo, Kagome and Inuyasha, likewise insomniac, sitting near the open doorway of the hut by the light of the pit fire, talking and laughing softly.

He liked the warm and comforting sight of such closeness and camaraderie, and did not wish to disrupt it, so he and Kirara stood behind a tree, and he peered out past the trunk at his friends.

At some point, Rin, apparently stiff from sitting up for so long, stood up and stepped out of doors, and raised her arms high above her head to give her body a good stretch. She tilted her head back and basked in the moonlight, and Kohaku suddenly found himself catching his breath in a way that he never had before, unexpectedly aroused by the silhouette of her body against the glowing, fire-lit frame of the hut doorway.

He saw, as if for the first time, the womanly curve of her spine as it dipped into the small of her back and flared out succulently over her pert bottom and hips; and the delicate line of her neck, accentuated by the fact that the warm night had prompted her to pin all her hair up in a bun near the top of her head. He must have noticed her body before, and yet, he seemed to see it through fresh eyes tonight, in an unexpected blaze of sexual attraction.

...

In the morning, Rin rose and went out to the big vegetable garden to do her job of weeding out pests from the growing greens and watering them to keep them alive and fresh in the summer heat.

Kohaku met her there as he so often did these days, but something… she wasn't sure what… something seemed different. The way he looked at her, as if his eyes were piercing right through to the thoughts in her mind while at the same time seeming to gaze more softly upon her, was most unusual for him.

And his speech – his voice and words seemed the barest shade more uncertain than usual, as if he were afraid of saying something that might upset or offend her. At one point, he handed her a gardening tool for loosening the soil with, and his hand actually trembled as she took it from him.

 _Maybe he's ill,_ she thought.

It went on for days, however. No one else seemed to notice the difference, but she, with whom he interacted so much, could detect that shade more deference in his manner towards her which at the same time was accompanied by an attitude of greater protectiveness. He bristled when other boys spoke to her, and he seemed to take more care of her when they went out with Kirara. Several times, she caught him staring at her very much the way she had used to stare at him when she was a besotted little girl.

Still, after having been so physically intimate with Koga, she found herself looking at Kohaku now and seeing someone who might be grown up, but who appeared in her eyes to be a little boy in comparison with the wolf demon.

That was, until the day they took a walk in the fields beyond the village after flying out on Kirara, and when she teased him mercilessly after he related a demon-slaying episode that had left him embarrassed and with his face in the mud. He ran after her, caught her and pinned her back against a tree, and in mere moments, the little boy was a boy no longer, but an ardent suitor who left her in no doubt about what he wanted, and what he would do to her right away had he not been brought up so well, or if he had cared less about her.

"Kohaku…" she whispered, feeling his body pressing against hers, and the unyielding trunk of the tree behind her.

He didn't say anything, but only brought his lips gently down over hers, and kissed her with affection and love, until she began to melt.

Just a little.

He'd kept her waiting long enough, and he still had an awful lot to prove, and she was going to make sure that he proved it.


	16. Time

In the end, what it took was months of paying attention to things she said, and discovering who she was as a grown-up woman. Months of finding out what he truly respected about her, and what she genuinely liked about him as an individual human being. Time, effort and care put into doing the things that delighted her, and learning in the process that what made her happy also made him a better person. And not least, a very male fascination with her feminine beauty tempered by his desire to respect her human boundaries.

It took all that and more for Kohaku to bring Rin to the moment where she looked at him once again out of eyes that shone with admiration as well as affection, and personal interest as well as the general love she gave to all her friends.

Rin recognised the moment she began to fall in love with Kohaku again instead of just loving him. She had always loved him. But then she had also always loved Kaede, her Sesshomaru-sama, Jaken, Ah-Un, Shippo, Inuyasha, Kagome, Sango, Miroku, their three children and Kirara from the second she had come to know each of them in turn. Being _in love_ with Kohaku all over again, however, felt entirely different from the affectionate love she had had for him ever since she had made up her mind not to think of him as a husband-to-be any longer, and even quite different from the young romantic love she had previously harboured for him.

The moment came when she was in Kaede's hut pounding herbs to make into a poultice for the fishkeeper's wife, whose knee was inflamed after having twisted it in a fall. Kohaku entered the hut, seeking her company, and without their saying a word to each other, he very naturally sat on the floor on the other side of the heavy stone bowl in which her pestle was grinding up the herbal mixture, and fed in the leaves, grain and vegetable pulp bit by bit, adjusting his timing and quantities in response to the tiniest nods or shakes of her head.

That was the moment. It wasn't gifts, or flowery words of love, or grand gestures, but just a sudden dawning on her then that this was a man she could truly live and work beside for the rest of her days, someone who was in tune with the daily rhythms of her life, and who enjoyed being with her in the course of an ordinary existence.

Still, something held her back. Something that tugged at the part of her that was anything but ordinary, and which made her want to howl at the moon.

Kohaku sensed it and knew her wild side, but he had caused her so much disappointment before that he had no intention of suppressing that facet of her nature, or of backing away timidly as he might have done a little over a year ago. Through the long, wistful months of autumn, when everything in nature looked and sounded and smelt of sadness, loss and parting, he remained by her side and held her close when she would let him, and gave her all his heart to do with as she would.

And still, she held back, until one day the aura and scent of wolf demon announced itself in the village, and Koga appeared for a visit, escorted into their community by Inuyasha.

"Rin," Koga said the moment she came into view, and he was by her side in a moment, taking her hands in his.

"Koga," she smiled, delighted to see him, her wild nature responding to every cell of his being, but her heart knowing in a moment – as swift as the suddenness of that moment during which she knew she was in love with Kohaku again – that she loved this demon with the love she gave her friends, and that the wildness within her resonated at the sight of him in the same way that it thrilled to her adoptive father's presence, or to Inuyasha's untameable spirit.

Kohaku nodded to him, and Koga nodded back. Neither male was particularly happy that the other had a claim on Rin, but in another one of those curious moments of life, each accepted that he – and all other living beings – could know and grasp and blend with another living being only so far before the other's individuality must push out all who would invade it, as an act of self-preservation and self-respect.

Rin looked at Kohaku for a second before turning towards the forest with Koga, where she had consented to go for a walk with him. There was a hint of a smile in her eyes – a gentle, kind smile – and Kohaku alternated between perceiving it as a smile of parting, and a smile of reassurance. She would leave him forever… no, she would not… he would never see her again… she would come right back… she loved the wolf after all… no, her heart was with him…

In the end, he could only trust in the goodness of her heart to know what was right for them all, and in the currents of fate that had entwined the threads of their lives in one way or another, to bring her back to his side.

...

"When are you going to put him out of his misery?" Koga asked the girl beside him once they were in the forest. Although winter was on its way, the day was bright and clear, and the forest had a lively air about it, with birds chirping and squabbling in the foliage high above them. Sesshomaru was somewhere nearby too, although he was out of sight at present along another path, talking to Inuyasha.

"What do you mean?" she asked, although she had an inkling.

"The young man – you've decided to spend your life with him, haven't you?"

She looked down at her sandal-clad feet deep in the pile of orange-yellow leaves for a moment, then looked up at Koga, and said: "I would like to do that. But I keep thinking that after all you have done for me, it would be wrong to – to be with someone else other than you."

Koga stopped walking and took her hand in his. He made her turn to face him, and looked directly into her eyes. "Obligation, Rin?" he asked. "Now, who was that little girl in that winter past who was so relieved when her mutt-faced uncle snorted and told the taijiya that it would be a horrible idea to marry her out of obligation?"

She blushed and turned her head to look at an imaginary spot on the trunk of the nearest tree. "I didn't tell you that I was relieved when Inuyasha said that," she murmured.

"You didn't have to," Koga laughed. "Even from where I was standing, I could detect the scent of your relief when mutt face spoke up on your behalf. He could scent it, and so could Sesshomaru. We demons know how you felt about the idea of the young man taking you as a wife only because he felt guilty about hurting your feelings. But you're telling me that you would decline him now that he's finally come to his senses, just because you feel obligated to me? You wouldn't insult me that way, would you?"

"I had no intention of insulting you, and you know it," she sighed.

"You owe me nothing," Koga declared. "When you refused me, I decided in my heart and mind that it was only right, because I could never deserve your love after all the pain I caused you. It doesn't matter that I tried to make it up to you or to take some of the sting out of your memories – I still have a long way to go before I could ever reach a point in my life where I would genuinely deserve you. Perhaps I will even have to wait till your next life."

She prodded a leaf with the toes of her right foot, bowed her head, and said awkwardly: "I've already promised my next life to Shippo."

"Shippo? The runt?" Koga echoed in disbelief. "He's in the running for your heart as well?"

"I'm afraid so."

"That precocious little kit!" Koga exclaimed. "I can't believe he's already claimed your next incarnation in advance!"

They looked at each other, one wide-eyed with surprise and the other biting her lip in embarrassment, and the very next moment, they were both laughing hard enough for tears to brighten their eyes. When Rin recovered her breath at last, she let Koga draw her to him in a gentle embrace, and she whispered to him: "At least I know I won't break your heart by dying on you sixty years from now."

"I can wait for your next, next life," he whispered back. "If you're still a human in your second reincarnation from now, then I might just be a really ancient demon by then, and we could end up dying together of old age after all. And if you somehow get reincarnated as a demon, well, you'll be a young one, but I'll try to leave you a rich and powerful widow."

They laughed again at the idea of that, but under it all was the sadness of parting and the shadow of death. She began to shake her head slowly as she looked into his eyes, and said to him: "I would not wish you to have to wait as many years as that. I hope you find your true love long, long before my next lifetime. Maybe you'll fall in love with one of my daughters, or even my granddaughters – who knows?"

"Indeed, who knows what life will bring?" he agreed. "Although if your daughters have any sense, they'll choose someone smarter than me."

"You're smart enough for anyone, Koga-kun," she said. "This may sound really, really strange, but I would actually be delighted to be your mother-in-law one day."

"Ha, Sesshomaru would probably cut off my head long before I ever have the right to call him 'Grandpa'! And your young man would never give me one of his daughters!"

Once more, they chuckled over a future that might never come to pass, but there was more mirth in their laughter now, and less of the sadness of death and parting – although death and parting are the very things that are certain about life.

...

Koga's visit to the village lasted three days, and when he left, Rin was able to bid him farewell with a lighter heart than she had thought she would.

She and Kohaku walked in the forest on the morning the wolf demon left, and as they strolled over a carpet of fallen leaves that reminded them at every step of the mortality of living things – some with briefer lives than others – they leaned in towards each other until her head was resting against his upper arm.

Somewhere along the path, they came closer to another path along which Sesshomaru and Inuyasha were standing at some distance to their right; and when they glanced over to their left, Kagome was at a distance too, alone, looking at her husband and his brother with a look of calm understanding and full-hearted love which did not change or fade even when Sesshomaru took Inuyasha into his arms, and the half-demon rested his head on his brother's shoulder, their long white hair coming together in a seamless flow.

Kagome had matured, Rin thought as she looked at the miko, and maturity took her another step, another day, another year closer to death, but she had plainly made up her mind not to waste her short human life in the throes of jealousy or anger as she had when she was still fifteen and a child from the future, a time when life had seemed endless.

The sight brought tears to Rin's eyes, and she steered Kohaku and herself away from the others, back down the path they had come along.

"I'm glad I will not live much longer or much less than you will, Kohaku," she told him. "Even if one of us should die an early death, human lives aren't that long. We won't have forever to wait until they end."

"I'm glad for that too," he said in response, with a sincerity that touched her heart. "I don't want to live too long without you."

"Do you still really mean that, when you know that you are not the first man to have touched me, or known my innermost soul and fears and thoughts?" she asked, knowing that she could very well lose him as she said those words.

But he replied steadily: "I know. I know how the demon world works, and I know what it meant for Koga to court you."

Another girl might have been relieved and grateful for that answer, but Rin was not settling for any less than complete acceptance of her past and every facet of her nature. So she said to her young man seriously, and firmly: "Koga may not have known me fully in the flesh, Kohaku, but I can tell you here and now that in every other way – when his pack took my life – to me, it meant that he was the first to pierce my flesh, the first to make me bleed, the first to devour my body. And when he saved my life last winter, and then helped me by trying to heal my memories and my pain, to me it meant that he was the first to lay claim to me. Do you understand?"

"I understand. And I still love you, and I still adore you, and I still want you to be my wife as long as we both live. Will you live your life with me?"

She nodded, and she shed tears for his acceptance of all that she was, and he wiped them away with the cleanest part of his sleeve he could find.

"Come on," he said, taking her hand. "Let's go back to the village and wait there for Sesshomaru-sama and Inuyasha. We can tell your father that his determination to find out which suitor was deserving of you has come to a conclusion at last, and we can tell them all that we have a wedding to plan."

"A human wedding," she said.

"Perhaps with a few demon elements, as we owe our demon family and friends so much," he added.

"And when we're gone, we know they'll look out for our children and grandchildren."

"Maybe one of our descendants will mate with one of their offspring," Kohaku mused.

Rin glanced in the direction in which Koga had left that morning, and smiled as she turned to her husband-to-be, saying: "Speaking of that…"

\- END -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's note (updated on FFnet on 19 May 2011):  
> ** Thank you to everyone who has been following this tale, and who has left reviews and comments, and sent me PMs.
> 
> I initially chose the pairing of Koga and Rin in the summary of this story, because most of the growth Rin would have to make would involve Koga, even though ultimately, she ends up with Kohaku. The end of the story also suggests that Koga continues to play an important role in her life afterwards. And at least in this story, Koga comes only second to Sesshomaru in how much he shapes her existence. If I could have chosen more than one pairing in my first summary, I would have, because this tale has really been about Rin developing her relationship with _two_ potential partners – Koga and Kohaku, and about how she finds strength within herself. Unfortunately, the system only allows you to reflect one pairing, and I did get several complaints from readers who expected Rin to end up with Koga. So I've removed the other characters from the system pairing, and left only Rin.
> 
> I'll admit that I also used this story to express in some detail my philosophies about differences in values between cultures, societies and eras, and my thoughts about gender equality, individual freedom, and conventional expectations about love, romance and marriage, as well as ideas about life and death. Sorry if I got quite technical and rambly about all those themes sometimes and if those bits got boring!
> 
> For anyone who might be wondering about the lines of poetry (or semi-poetic scribblings, rather) in Chapters 11 and 12, they are my own. With regard to the kanji details described in relation to Rin's poem, the references are to the mainland Chinese word for wave ("lang" [fourth tone]), which has the same right-hand-side component as the Chinese and Japanese symbol for "wolf" ("lang" [second tone] in Chinese, and "ookami" in Japanese). The left-hand-side components are of course different, being "water" and "animal" respectively. But in Japanese, as far as I know, the usual kanji for wave is "nami", a character pronounced "bo" [first tone] in Chinese, and which has no component in common with "wolf". Therefore, one of the key points of those passages is that Rin uses an unusual symbol for "wave" that would normally not be used by a Japanese writer – and would draw the reader's attention to what else it might be pointing to.


End file.
